Texas Challenges Permit Ban Protecting Endangered Cranes
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Texas asked for an emergency stay of a U.S. court order temporarily barring water permits for a river system supplying central Texas cities, power generators and petrochemical plants to ensure enough water reaches the last migratory flock of endangered whooping cranes.
The five-foot-tall bird was believed to be extinct until a flock of 15 survivors was found on an isolated stretch of Texas coastal marsh in the 1940s. There are about 500 whooping cranes alive today, according to trial evidence, with a flock of about 250 birds that migrates between Texas and Canada. That flock is the only self-sustaining wild population.