Season 2, Episode 7: Whooping Crane Love Stories

In this episode of DETOURS, Jordan and James are joined by Eva Szyszkoski, a wildlife technician with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries who specializes in the state's efforts to reintroduce the endangered whooping crane population to the landscape. One of the rarest birds in the world, the whooping crane's population in North America was down to only twenty-one birds in the wild in 1945. Since then, scientists have combined efforts to raise the birds in captivity while monitoring, and on occasions intervening with, populations released in specific habitats around the continent. Since 2011, Louisiana has hosted a small population—which Szyszkoski has played a major part in monitoring for years now. Over the course of our conversation, she shares the major struggles of Louisiana's reintroduction program, as well as its recent successes—and tells us what it is like to be face to face with these majestic, five-foot beauties. 

Reading List

Here, find articles and other materials that we either mentioned in the episode, or that we think might enrich and/or further the conversations we had. 

The State of Whooping Crane Conservation in Louisiana

Read Chris Staudinger's story on current whooping crane efforts, featuring Szyszkoski's work, in our June 2023 "Our Natural World" issue. 

Louisiana's Whooping Cranes

Here is an older story on the earlier days of the Louisiana whooping crane reintroduction program, also written by Staudinger, from our August 2016 issue. 

Want to learn more about Louisiana's whooping cranes, and the efforts to reintroduce them to the wild? 

Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries-Whooping Crane

Learn more about Louisiana's whooping crane population, at the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries website, where you can find fact sheets, photographs, recent studies, and information at the Audubon Nature Institute Species Survival Center. 

International Crane Foundation 

Get updates on the populations of whooping cranes outside of Louisiana, including the Eastern Migratory population. The Crane Foundation shares news concerning the cranes from across North America, and has mechanisms for citizens to support their conservation efforts through volunteer opportunities and donations. 

Fish and Wildlife Service 

The whooping crane population is the flagship species for the wildlife conservation movement in North America, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversees all conservation efforts in the country. Learn more about the bird, the latest updates in reintroduction efforts, and more. 

LDWF-Whooping Cranes Facebook Page

See real time updates on the Louisiana population of whooping cranes, including photos of individual cranes as they pair up, lay nests, and raise chicks. Last year, this video of L14-17's release in Vermilion Parish at White Lake WCA captured the hearts of thousands of viewers: 

Meet Your Co-Hosts 

James Fox-Smith is the Publisher of Country Roads magazine, and has been on the masthead since 1995 when he followed a Louisiana girl (Country Roads' Associate Publisher Ashley Fox-Smith) to her hometown of St. Francisville to take over her mother's magazine. The past two decades have made this Aussie into a true Louisianan, as passionate and knowledgable about the intricacies of this region's culture as any bayou-born Cajun. Overseeing the company for much of its forty-year history, he's worn almost every hat the magazine has to offer, from sales to editorial to marketing—and writes a monthly publisher's column, titled "Reflections" which you can peruse, here. You also might catch him hosting the Louisiana Public Broadcasting's weekly series Art Rocks!—which spotlights artists, performance, culture, literature, history and the impact of art in our world.

Jordan LaHaye Fontenot is the Managing Editor of Country Roads magazine, and has been a part of the editorial team since 2018. Born and raised in the heart of Acadiana, she came to Country Roads with a passion for Louisiana storytelling. She holds a degree in English from Louisiana State University, where she received the 2018 Sarah Sue Goldsmith Award for Nonfiction. In addition to her work at Country Roads, she has published stories in regional and international publications including inRegister, Atlas Obscura, and the Oxford American. Her first book Home of the Happy: A murder on the Cajun Prairie, will be  published by Mariner Books in 2025.  

Alexandra Kennon is the Arts & Entertainment Editor at Country Roads since 2020, and has been writing and photographing stories about Southern culture, cuisine, history, and art for the magazine since 2016. She holds degrees in Journalism and Theatre Arts from Loyola University New Orleans, where she was Managing Editor of Pacemaker-winning university newspaper The Maroon, and could typically be found flitting between the newsroom and black box theatre. She has acted in productions ranging from independent festival films to Tennessee Williams world-premiere stage productions, and previously led historical, culinary, and cultural tours of New Orleans. Her book Classic Restaurants of New Orleans, published by Arcadia/The History Press with a foreword by Walter Isaacson, is available most places one finds books.