Whooping Crane occupancy and nesting areas in Canada, 1966-2025

Whooping Crane occupancy and nesting areas in Canada, 1966-2025 is an open dataset from Environment and Climate Change Canada with 7 files (HTML, TXT, FGDB/GDB, GPKG, KMZ); catalogue record updated 2026-10-14. On CanQuery you can follow the original downloads. Files are available in English and French.

This dataset identifies areas of Canada where whooping cranes (Grus americana) are known to have occurred. The whooping crane is protected under the Migratory Birds Convention Act and has been listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act since 2003. The Aransas-Wood Buffalo population (AWBP) is the only remaining wild, self-sustaining population of the species, and the only one that occurs in Canada. The AWBP spends roughly half of its annual cycle in Canada, migrating through Alberta, Saskatchewan and occasionally Manitoba to breeding areas in and around Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories. The dataset draws on two independent sources. The first is satellite tracking of individually marked cranes, carried out by the Whooping Crane Tracking Partnership, a collaboration among Environment and Climate Change Canada, Parks Canada, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey. Between December 2009 and December 2025, 182 cranes were captured and fitted with GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking devices to monitor their movement, behavior and survival during all aspects of their annual cycle,…

Publisher

Environment and Climate Change Canada

Resources

7

Catalogue metadata updated

2026-10-14