A rare bird species that once vanished from Louisiana is making a steady comeback as four more whooping cranes were released into the wild last month.

The release of the young birds, which were raised at a facility on the Westbank, is part of a years-long effort to bring the endangered species back to Louisiana.

The whooping crane is one of the rarest bird species in the world, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. They are large-bodied birds that can grow up to five feet tall with wingspans of up to eight feet, and can live up to 30 years in the wild.

Over the past seven years, the Audubon Nature Institute and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has released over 50 cranes into the White Lake Westland Conservation Area in Vermillion Parish. Many of the birds, including the four released last month, were hatched and raised at Audubon’s facility.

“We’re making great strides,” said Richard Dunn, the facility’s assistant curator, “and we’re starting to see the results of what we’re doing.”

Every year, staffers name the baby cranes according to a theme, Dunn added. This year’s theme was pasta shapes, so the four released cranes were named Gigli, Vermicelli, Fiori and Gemelli.

Whooping cranes, which are white with distinctive red heads and black facial markings, once roamed the state as both non-migratory and migratory species. But their numbers began to dwindle as humans converted their habitat into farmland and hunted the birds, whose feathers became popular clothing accessories.

By 1950, the last living whooping crane in Louisiana was transported to a wildlife refuge on the Texas coast.

But in 2011, the state started an effort to reintroduce the birds into the wild. That first year, ten young cranes entered the conservation area in Vermillion Parish. 

Since 2017, when Audubon joined the effort, the environmental organization has released 55 cranes, 31 of which were hatched at the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center. With the addition of the four new birds, there are now 77 whooping cranes across the state and over 700 nationwide, Dunn said. 

“The addition of these young cranes is another important step in restoring a once-thriving species to the Louisiana landscape,” Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Madison Sheahan said in a statement. 

Staff from the Audubon Institute and the state wildlife department raised the baby birds at the Westbank facility. This year, most of the young cranes, called “colts,” were hatched from eggs that came from a migratory flock in Wisconsin, but one chick came from an egg laid by Louisiana cranes. Two unreleased birds were kept at the facility for future breeding. 

The goal of the program is to create a self-sustaining population of non-migratory whooping cranes in the state, part of a national push to move the birds from endangered to threatened. In Louisiana, a self-sustaining population of whooping cranes would require about 120 birds with 30 reproducing pairs to survive in the wild for a decade.

“This is the point of what we do,” Dunn said, “see the birds increase in the wild.”