Iowa sending swans south

With a couple more layers of snow, a ride south might seem like a good idea. For 30 young trumpeter swans in Iowa, it’s a done deal.

This week the seven-month-old cygnets will be collected from five locations; loaded into a trailer and pointed toward Arkansas. Wildlife biologists hope the swans’ new winter homes will click in their migration memory next year, when it is time to migrate again.

“This is the next step in the swan restoration program here,” explains Dave Hoffman, from the Department of Natural Resources wildlife bureau. “Since the 1990s, trumpeter swans have been released on wetlands through Iowa. Since those early years, young swans have been paired with adults through their first season. In some cases, the adults were disabled birds. Others had their wings clipped to keep them close to a secure, supervised location.”

As swans began nesting and raising broods by the late ‘90s, those family groups could migrate. Still more, young coming were in; to buoy those wild populations. And not all of them migrate to the best of winter homes. “These cygnets don’t have the parents to show where to migrate, so we will release them where there are free flying adults,” says Hoffman.  “We’re hoping they’ll hook up with the young birds and show them the migratory path back to the north.”

By placing the swans in the Hollow Bend National Wildlife Refuge in central Arkansas and the Buffalo National River Area in northern Arkansas, they will have the food, water and protection from predators to come through winter in good shape. Hoffman says many young swans were wandering into marginal habitat during migration; maybe not going far enough to escape Midwest cold snaps and reducing their overall chances for survival. “The next step is to increase survival and increase nesting and reproduction as they migrate back to Iowa.”

There’s no guarantee, of course, that the swans will zero in on the exact home pond they leave this winter. The program, supported by the 14 states in the Mississippi Flyway Council and in conjunction with the Trumpeter Swan Society, is designed to get swans back to the upper Midwest—including Illinois.

Where they all shake out will depend on wetland availability and water quality. Lake Wapello in southeast Iowa or Clear Lake in northern Iowa might have a net loss of local birds, if a pair sets up nesting one or two counties away. However, the big picture will benefit, with more swans on more wetlands. Already in recent years, Iowa-raised swans have migrated into Illinois near Savanna where they have had a successful nesting.

“We had 30 successful pairs of nesting swans in Iowa (in 2007) so the migrating population is growing slowly,” says Hoffman. “We are seeing increasing numbers of trumpeters.”  That’s a far cry from the swan ‘drought’ that stretched from 1883 to 1998 without a confirmed nest in Iowa.

As more swans imprint on Iowa and other northern waters, they’ll find their way back and forth between wintering areas. And wildlife officials hope swans—the largest North American waterfowl—keep up that visibility to tell the story of wetlands; and how important they are to a variety of wild species, as well as for flood control and water quality.