The Crane Trust is a habitat conservation nonprofit organization located on the beautiful Platte River in South Central Nebraska. In addition to offering tours of one of the greatest migrations in the world, the Trust works year-round to protect and preserve nearly 10,000 acres of critical habitat for the endangered whooping cranes, sandhill cranes, and countless other species sharing fragile river and prairie ecosystems.

 

On Monday March 20th, we estimated 378,000 +/- 40,500 Sandhill Cranes around the Platte River between Chapman to Overton, NE, which appears to be a 17% decrease in numbers from last week. This is slightly surprising as we were expecting an increase from last week. However, there are many plausible reasons to lead us to believe we may have had a lower than average detection rate this week.

This week on Tuesday 3/14/23, we estimated 457,800 +/- 28,600 Sandhill Cranes within the Central Platte River Valley between Chapman and Overton, NE. We saw Sandhill Cranes in every bridge segment this week as the total number of Sandhill Cranes doubled from last week.