[3] After being pushed to the brink of extinction, due to unregulated hunting and loss of habitat, and just 21 wild (and two captive) cranes remaining by 1941, conservation efforts would lead to a partial recovery.

[4][5] The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in-captivity, only slightly exceeds 800 birds as of 2020[update].

In 1729–1732 Mark Catesby had described and illustrated the whooping crane in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands,[7] and in 1750 George Edwards had described and illustrated the crane using a preserved specimen that had been brought to London from the Hudson Bay area of northeast Canada by James Isham, an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company.

The first unison call ever recorded in the wild was taken in the whooping cranes' wintering area of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge during December 1999.

[21][1] By the mid-20th century, the muskeg of the taiga in Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta and Northwest Territories, Canada, and the surrounding area had become the last remnant of the former nesting habitat of the Whooping Crane Summer Range.

[22] However, with the recent Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership Reintroduction Project, whooping cranes nested naturally for the first time in 100 years in the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin, United States, and these have subsequently expanded their summer range in Wisconsin and surrounding states, while reintroduced experimental non-migratory populations have nested in Florida and Louisiana.

[24] The Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma is a major migratory stopover for the crane population, hosting over 75% of the species annually.

Drought conditions in 2011 exposed much of the lake bed, creating ample feeding grounds for these cranes just as they were taking their autumn migration through Texas.

[27] Their many potential nest and brood predators include the American black bear, wolverine, gray wolf, cougar, red fox, Canada lynx, bald eagle, and common raven.

[18][30] In Florida, bobcats have caused the great majority of natural mortalities among whooping cranes, including several ambushed adults and the first chick documented to be born in the wild in 60 years.

[38] In their Texas wintering grounds, this species feeds on various crustaceans, mollusks, fish (such as eel), small reptiles and aquatic plants.

In earlier years, whooping crane chicks were caught and banded in the breeding areas of Wood Buffalo National Park.

Although this delivered valuable insight into individual life history and behaviour, it has been discontinued due to risks to the cranes and the people involved.

This technique was developed by B. Wessling and applied in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and also partially in the breeding grounds in Canada over five years.

Whooping cranes are believed to have been naturally rare, and major population declines caused by habitat destruction and overhunting led them to them become critically endangered.

By 1938 there were just 15 adults in a single migratory flock, plus about thirteen additional birds living in a non-migratory population in Louisiana, but the latter were scattered by a 1940 hurricane that killed half of them, while the survivors never again reproduced in the wild.

[46][47] In the early 1960s, Robert Porter Allen, an ornithologist with the National Audubon Society, appeared as a guest challenger on the network television show To Tell The Truth, which gave the Conservation movement some opportunity to update the public on their efforts to save the whooping crane from extinction.

This non-profit organization functioned largely by influencing federal, state and provincial political decisions and educating the general public about the critical status of the bird.

[46] In 1976, with the wild population numbering only 60 birds and having increased at an average of only one bird per year over the past decades,[46] ornithologist George W. Archibald, co-founder of the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, began working with 'Tex', a female whooping crane hatched at the San Antonio Zoo in 1967 to Crip and his new mate, the wild-captured 'Rosie', to get her to lay a fertile egg through artificial insemination.

Archibald spent three years with Tex, acting as a male crane – walking, calling, dancing – to shift her into reproductive condition.

As Archibald recounted the tale on The Tonight Show in 1982, he stunned the audience and host Johnny Carson with the sad end of the story – the death of Tex shortly after the hatching of her one and only chick, named 'Gee Whiz'.

[52] In 2017, the decision was made for the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center to end its 51-year effort to breed and train whooping cranes for release, due to changing priorities and in the face of budget cuts by the Trump administration.

The group attributes the deaths of nearly two dozen whooping cranes in the winter of 2008 and 2009 to inadequate flows from the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers.

[58] In March 2013 during continuing drought conditions, a federal court ordered TCEQ to develop a habitat protection plan for the crane and to cease issuing permits for waters from the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers.

[97] Illegal shootings have accounted for an even larger proportion of mortality among the birds introduced into the Louisiana population,[102] with about 10% of the first 147 released cranes being shot and killed.