Why Captive Breeding?
The very low numbers of wild whooping cranes caused biologists to try safeguarding the species through captive breeding. Captive breeding means that members of a wild species are captured, then bred and raised in a special facility under the care of wildlife biologists and other experts. Starting in 1967, eggs were collected from the Aransas/Wood Buffalo flock (the last natural migraory flock until the reintroduction started in 2001). Eggs were collected for several year by biologists. These eggs became the birds of small captive populations that could provide chicks for future projects to help bring whooping cranes back from the brink of extinction. Captive breeding is expensive and doesn’t always work. (Some species, such as giant pandas, rarely breed successfully in captivity.) But there are some amazing success stories for captive breeding, and several good reasons to try it as a conservation tool. Bringing an animal into captivity may represent the last chance to preserve a specie
