Six swans a-paddling: Trumpeters released to new home in Blackfoot Valley
By JOHN CRAMER of the Missoulian
Watch a video from Monday's release of trumpeter swans
OVANDO - Six more trumpeter swans were released in the Blackfoot Valley on Monday, the latest batch of the imperiled waterfowl to be reintroduced here by a coalition of government agencies, nonprofit groups and landowners.
The year-old swans, which were hatched from eggs taken from Canada, paddled quickly away and settled into their new home on a pond on the Two Creek-Monture cattle ranch to the cheers of schoolchildren who came to watch.
“This is a terrific example of what our partnership can do in restoring our landscape and our critters,” said Greg Neudecker, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist overseeing the Blackfoot swan project.
Kat Imhoff, right, the state director for the Nature Conservancy: and five other people hold trumpeter swans prior to releasing them onto a pond at the Two Creek-Monture cattle ranch on Monday. Biologists hope to create a self-sustaining swan population in the Blackfoot Valley. Photo by TOM BAUER/Missoulian
The birds' wing feathers were clipped to prevent them from flying away for the next two months, an effort to attract other swans returning from their winter migrations and to create a self-sustaining trumpeter swan population in the Blackfoot.
Wildlife biologists said the nascent return of the swan - a majestic white bird whose trumpet-like honk can herald the health of an ecosystem - is the latest success story in Montana's effort to restore its native wildlife, including the grizzly bear and gray wolf.
The swans were released to kick off the Partners for Conservation Conference hosted by the nonprofit Blackfoot Challenge and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The three-day workshop is intended to highlight the public-private effort to preserve the Blackfoot Valley's open spaces, fish and wildlife habitat, and agricultural way of life.
Since 2005, the Fish and Wildlife Service has released 51 trumpeter swans onto seasonal and year-round wetlands, lakes and ponds in the Blackfoot, hoping to increase the population of the federally protected species in the West and Midwest.
Trumpeter swans, one of the largest waterfowl species on the planet, once lived across much of the western and midwestern United States, but overhunting for their feathers, meat and eggs, lead poisoning and habitat loss drastically reduced their numbers in the early 1900s.
In the 1930s, fewer than 70 trumpeters were known to exist, living in southwest Montana near Yellowstone National Park.
Today, reintroduction efforts have boosted the swan's North American population to an estimated 16,000, including about 500 in the northern Rocky Mountains.
About 200 trumpeter swans spend time in three areas in Montana - in the Blackfoot and Mission valleys, where they were reintroduced, and in the Centennial Valley, where the last remaining population in the Lower 48 states occurs naturally.
Of the 40 swans previously released in the Blackfoot Valley, a dozen are known to be alive and a handful returned to the valley in past seasons after wintering in southeast Idaho. Biologist hope five to eight of the swans return this spring.
Another 40 swans are to be released in June in the Blackfoot.
Neudecker said it could take five to 10 years to establish a breeding population of a half-dozen swans. Swans typically mate when they are 4 to 5 years old.
The swans, which have been released on several sites in the Blackfoot Valley since 2005, were released Monday on a 54-acre wetland that had been drained after World War II for cattle grazing and was restored in 1995 to its natural state.
Cooper Burchenal, whose family owns the Two Creek-Monture Ranch, about half of which is under a conservation easement, said his parents participate in the swan project because “they have a real love of the natural world.”
Swan release sites are selected based on a number of factors, including submerged vegetation for forage, the absence of potentially fatal power lines and plentiful open water during the summer weeks when swans molt and can't fly.
Montana has about 30,000 acres of wetlands, about 70 percent of which are seasonal, that can support the swans.
Up to 180 trumpeter swan eggs are to be collected from Canada over three years and released as young adults in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Nearly all of the eggs collected so far have hatched.
The birds are tagged with bright red numbered neck collars, and the public is encouraged to report any sightings of the swans to help biologists track their movements.
Unlike most bird species that consider home to be the place they hatched, trumpeter swans return to nest in the place they learned to fly.
Eleven Blackfoot swans were sighted last winter in southeast Idaho along the Snake and Bear rivers.
“That's exactly the kind of migration we were hoping for,” Neudecker said. “I'm optimistic things will only get better.”
To report a swan with a red neck collar, call (406) 793-7400.
Reporter John Cramer can be reached at 523-5259 or at johncramer@missoulian.com.
