Starting in March 2025, the Crane Trust began a Sandhill Crane tracking study focused on estimating foraging range for Sandhill Cranes and examining shifts in crane migration through the central migratory corridor. For this project Crane Trust partnered with the International Crane Foundation and a well-known crane trapping expert. Our first year of crane trapping resulted in the placement of trackers on 5 Sandhill Cranes. We were able to track these cranes throughout the remainder of their Spring migration and their subsequent Fall 2025 migration. These cranes spread extensively throughout known Sandhill Crane nesting grounds in Manitoba, Ontario, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and even Siberia. During the Fall migration, these cranes returned to the US and made their way south to Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
In March 2026, these 5 cranes migrated north and were seen to utilize the Platte River once again. Additionally, we continued our trapping effort this year and were able to capture and place trackers on 11 more cranes, bringing our total up to 16 tracked cranes! This number of captures was only possible thanks to the assistance of our partners and the diligent work of Crane Trust staff. We plan to have a total of 20 trackers deployed by the end of the year,
ideally, placing the remaining 4 during the Fall migration this year.
As the Spring migration progresses we plan to provide regular updates on the cranes both through the storymap website (link here) and through short informational videos posted to our social media accounts. The storymap website can also be accessed through our membership portal. To access the storymap through the membership portal, log in through our website using your username and password, then click the “Member Exclusive Content” link on the left on the “Portal Pages” tab. At the top of the “Member Exclusive Content” page you will find a link labeled “DONOR FUNDED SANDHILL CRANE TRACKING PROJECT WEBSITE – w/ Interactive Map”. Click that link and it will take you to the tracking map page. Be sure to check regularly for updates as we see where the newly tracked cranes from this year spend their summers and see if the first 5 tracked cranes from 2025 follow the same routes they did last year.
We anticipate a slow-down of information released once we get closer to June as many of the crane nest in remote areas where it is difficult to get a signal. We will post an update on the website once this happens and will make a larger once we receive signals from them again (likely, at the start of the Fall 2026 migration!).
As always, we’d like to thank the generous donors who made this project possible as well as our members whose interest and support makes all of our work possible.
Abraham Kanz,
Director of Conservation Research
akanz@cranetrust.org