BLACKFOOT TRUMPETER SWAN RESTORATION PROJECT

PROJECT BACKGROUND: An entry in the journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition dated July 6, 1806 refers to swans observed on Werner’s Creek, which is today near the Blackfoot-Clearwater Junction in the Blackfoot Valley. Being early July, these birds were certainly trumpeter swans. As more and more white settlers moved into Montana following Lewis and Clark, trumpeter swans began to disappear from many areas, in part due to their being killed for food and also to supply the lucrative trade in feathers for hats in Europe, Great Britain, and elsewhere. By the early 20th century, breeding trumpeters in most of Montana were a thing of the past. In the Blackfoot, breeding trumpeters were gone long before anyone living there now can remember.

NEW HOPE: In the spring of 2003, a pair of trumpeters miraculously appeared on a wetland east of Lincoln belonging to the Bouma Family. This pair of trumpeters eventually laid a nest of four eggs on a small island on the Bouma wetland. Tragically, the female of the swan pair collided with a power line nearby and perished. Quick thinking by the Boumas and others determined to salvage the nest resulted in the four eggs being quickly transported to the Montana Waterfowl Foundation near Ronan where the eggs were placed in the nest of a surrogate pair of trumpeters. Three of the eggs hatched and were raised by their surrogate parents until they were about ten weeks old. They were then re-captured and moved back to the Bouma pond where the male swan had spent the summer alone. Reunited, the parent male swan and his three young cygnets spent the rest of the fall at Bouma’s and then migrated south with the onset of winter weather. Some of the Bouma birds were later seen during fall migration near Jackson, Wyoming and one in northwestern Utah that winter.

BEGINNING IN 2005, the Blackfoot Challenge, Wyoming Wetlands Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks collaborated with Blackfoot Valley landowners and residents to secure ten trumpeters for transplanting and release in the Blackfoot Valley. From 2005 to 2009, this annual effort resulted in just over 100 trumpeters being released in the Valley in an effort to establish a nesting flock of at least seven breeding pairs. In 2009, at least one pair was sighted on a Blackfoot Valley wetland giving swan biologists and Blackfoot Valley residents strong hope that maybe as early as 2010, trumpeter swans would again be nesting in the Blackfoot.

THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE, Blackfoot Valley residents, and landowners wholeheartedly support the trumpeter swan restoration project and view it as an enhancement and benefit to the Valley’s wild, untamed nature. Once breeding trumpeters are restored, the community of breeding birds in the Valley will once again be complete, missing none of the birds reported there by Lewis and Clark two centuries ago! The largest of all the world’s waterfowl, the trumpeter swan is an icon for wetland conservation in the Blackfoot and throughout their ancestral range in western Montana. Wherever they occur, breeding trumpeters are an indicator of high quality wetlands, abundant plant life, wild places, and landowners and community residents who care about the future of wetlands and the diversity of wildlife they support.

ADOPT-A-SWAN: Beginning in 2009, some of the trumpeters released in the Blackfoot were marked with radio and satellite transmitters as part of the Blackfoot Challenge’s Adopt-A-Swan Program. Classroom students and students of all ages can track the movements of these instrument-carrying birds now and in the future as researchers strive to learn more about the movements and survival of the Blackfoot Trumpeters. As with all aspects of the Blackfoot trumpeter restoration program, success of the Adopt-A-Swan program relies heavily on the generous support of bird lovers, wetland enthusiasts, and conservation-minded folks from all walks of life.

TO LEARN MORE about how you can support the Blackfoot Trumpeter Swan Project go to http://www.blackfootchallenge.org or contact the Montana Wetlands Legacy Partnership Coordinator at www.wetlandslegacy.org/contact.html for more information.