Captive whooping crane eggs offer hope for endangered species

HOMOSASSA SPRINGS Art Yerian carefully cradled the speckled beige object in his rubber-gloved hands, recognizing it as a rare and precious possibility.

He slid it slowly down into a bright stream of light.

"You see that air sack,'' he said, as the high-intensity egg candler lit up the large egg making it appear to glow in the dark.

Then he carefully did the same thing with the second egg. "There's an air sack on that one also,'' he said. "You can see that there's some kind of embryo.''

While not proof that the eggs were viable, it was enough to give hope that, in about three weeks, there may be new additions to the population of endangered whooping cranes, America's tallest bird.

And these additions would be the first ever conceived at the Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. Federal and state officials said they did not know of any captive whooping cranes in Florida that have produced viable eggs.

Billy Brooks, a recovery biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said he was hopeful but realistic about the Homosassa Springs eggs. The crane experts worry that these will be infertile.

But if the eggs are fertile, Brooks said, they are likely bound for one of the whooping crane reintroduction or research programs based out of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland.

Chicks would mean that the Homosassa park's resident whooping cranes, Peepers and Levi, were not only serving their fellow cranes as an educational display, but they were also contributing more directly to the species' survival.

"It's a good thing, a really good thing,'' said Yerian, the park's manager. He will candle the eggs every several days until it can be determined for sure whether embryos are growing inside.

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Captive whooping crane eggs offer hope for endangered species