By
DAVID RAINER
The
rattling trill of noise was baffling as I walked across the parking lot at the
Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur recently to celebrate its 75th
anniversary.
Because
I hadn’t visited the refuge in winter, I didn’t realize what all that noise was
until the trill with a goose-like finish started getting louder and louder. I
looked in the gray skies and the mystery was solved. It was a group of six
cranes floating lazily in the north wind, headed for an agricultural field for
a mid-morning snack.
“Whooping
cranes?” I asked one of the rangers.
“Nope,
those are sandhills,” he answered. “We’ve got thousands. We’ve got some
whooping cranes, too. If you look in the back field, the whooping cranes are
the white ones.”
Indeed,
the back field was filled with cranes, mostly the red-capped sandhill variety.
The white whooping cranes, an endangered species, were easy to spot.
The
crane population is only one aspect of the mission for Wheeler National
Wildlife Refuge (NWR), which provides food and rest for a vast variety of bird
and waterfowl species that use the Tennessee River valley as wintering habitat.
“We
average at peak in the winter between 60,000 and 75,000 ducks on the refuge,”
said Wheeler NWR manager Dwight Cooley. “Almost without exception, mallards are
the No. 1 waterfowl species we winter here. There has been a bit of change over
the last 20 years. Gadwalls are our second highest number of birds that winter
here. At one time, the American wigeon was second.
“At
one time, we had 50,000 Canada geese wintering here. Now we’re lucky to get
between 500 and 1,000 of the migrant Canada geese. Our geese come from Southern
James Bay. There was a study done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
Ducks Unlimited that looked at this. What the study found was the geese were
wintering north of us for a variety of reasons, one of which was changing
agricultural practices to minimum tillage and no-tillage areas. The birds are just
not getting this far south any more.”
While
no waterfowl hunting is allowed on the 35,000-acre Wheeler NWR, Cooley said the
refuge’s wintering habitat makes the hunting better throughout the state.
“The
fact that the refuge attracts the largest number of ducks in the state, even
though we don’t hunt the refuge, I think the surrounding areas see a lot of
benefits in the waterfowl hunting throughout the Tennessee Valley,” he said.
When
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the executive order to establish the
refuge in 1938, Cooley said it was a time when the United States was trying to
“tame” the Tennessee River.
“It
was also a time of concern about waterfowl populations and breeding habitat in
particular,” said Cooley, who has been the manager at Wheeler for 16 years. “It
was really viewed as an experiment to see if wildlife could be managed in these
newly developed deep-water reservoirs in north Alabama. This is a long, almost
riparian type of refuge. It’s 20 miles long. It was part of the land acquired
by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for buffers and flowage easements when
Wheeler Dam was constructed in 1936.
“As
a matter of fact, in the executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt
it was stated that waterfowl was the prime reason the refuge was established.”
Cooley
said although the NWR system is in a period of tight budgets, the primary
missions will be continued.
“For
here, our priorities are waterfowl and endangered species,” he said. “We will
provide recreational opportunities for residents. And we’ll provide
conservation and environmental education for the public. The City of Huntsville
brings every student in the fifth grade over here every year and uses the
visitor center and observation area for their conservation and education
classes.
“There
are plenty of fishing opportunities. And we allow hunting for deer, feral hogs
and small game. The deer and hog hunting are bow-only except for a two-week to
20-day season for flintlocks (primitive muzzleloaders). We follow state regulations
on small game. We allow shotguns with non-toxic shot and rimfire rifles. We get
quite a lot of use during the hunting seasons. And we have more and more people
who are interested in wildlife photography.”
Like
most everything, Cooley said the effort to enhance the waterfowl habitat at the
refuge has been trial and error and has significantly evolved over the years.
“When
it started, the work was primarily in the deep-water habitats in the reservoir
itself with suitable plant species,” he said. “It didn’t work very well because
of the depth of the water and raising and lowering of the water levels from
summer to winter pools. That also involved electricity production, flood
control and, early on, mosquito control.
“The
managers at the time said there was one thing they could do, which was farm the
areas that had been in crops when the TVA acquired it. That was aimed primarily
at geese, which they knew would use those upland areas. So the farming program
in the National Wildlife Refuge System really started right here at Wheeler. In
fact, one of the former refuge managers, Tom Atkeson, wrote a book called
‘Farming for Wildlife,’ which was based on some of the early work done here at
Wheeler.”
The
habitat improvement eventually included water-control structures in the lowland
areas to control the water levels to help in the planting of native vegetation
with good seed production as well as row crops around the edges of the areas.
“As
we flood them in the winter time, those areas are flooded to provide food for
the waterfowl,” Cooley said. “In the upland areas, we farm between 3,000 and
5,000 acres on a share agreement with eight farmers in the area. We rotate
between corn and soybeans, mostly. Sometimes we will plant milo and millet, but
we mostly grow corn and soybeans.”
Celebrating
its 75th year of existence was a lesson in persistence. The government shutdown
forced the original anniversary celebration to be rescheduled. Then Mother
Nature decided to send a winter blast through north Alabama for the rescheduled
date of Dec. 7. Because of the weather forecast, a variety of outdoors
components to the celebration were canceled. The remainder of the events was
held inside the visitor center just off Highway 67.
Despite
a long journey in bad winter weather, Larry and Cheryl Battson, founders of
Wildlife Educational Services, made it to Decatur in time to present their live
wildlife program at the celebration with a variety of native and exotic
animals.
The
Teddy Roosevelt Show, featuring Joe Wiegand, entertained the audience with his
one-man theater show about the life and times of America’s 26th president, who
was an avid hunter and explorer.
The
anniversary celebration isn’t the only big event scheduled for Wheeler NWR. On
January 11, 2014, the refuge will celebrate the second annual Festival of the
Cranes.
The
Festival of the Cranes will include nature walks, live raptors and refuge
tours. Visitors will get a chance to see some of the more than 12,000 sandhill
cranes, along with several pairs of whooping cranes, that winter each year at
Wheeler.
Hosted
by the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge Association, the Festival of the Cranes kicks
off at 6 a.m. with a sunrise breakfast in the visitor center classroom. Cooley
will then lead an early morning walk to see cranes and other waterfowl as the
birds forage in nearby fields.
Joan
Garland, education outreach coordinator for the International Crane Foundation,
will give presentations on efforts to restore a migratory flock of whooping
cranes to eastern North America. Additional activities include two showings of
Hope Takes Wing, a film by and about Operation Migration on the history of the
whooping crane, and two presentations by Auburn University’s Southeastern
Raptor Center to teach about birds of prey, including owls, hawks, falcons and
eagles.
PHOTOS
(Cranes courtesy of USFWS, David Rainer) Sandhill cranes by the thousands use
Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur as wintering grounds because of
the habitat and abundance of food. The endangered whooping crane also uses the
refuge, which recently held its 75th anniversary celebration. As
part of the festivities, the Teddy Roosevelt Show, featuring Joe Weigand, made
its way through the crowd during the celebration. Larry and Cherryl Battson
also brought several animals from their collection at Wildlife Educational
Services, including this boa constrictor, which was so ably (yet tentatively)
held by 8-year-old Carson Lemmond of Somerville.
