The Trumpeter Swan Fund :: Wyoming Wetlands Society

About Wyoming Wetlands Society

The Wyoming Wetlands Society created The Trumpeter Swan Fund as a funding source to help restore breeding and migrating population of trumpeter swans to Wyoming and other western states. The cooperative private and state program is a template for partnerships in species restoration efforts. Working with private landowners, The Society is identifying and enhancing wetands to attract and host nesting trumpeters, and to create winter habitat.

Previously injured, rehabilitated swans are placed in suitable habitat with compatible mates and young from those pairs are used in restoration efforts throughout the western states.

Volunteer opportunities exist year-round to help with swan feeding and related necessary swan work. —BACK TO THE TOP

Results and Accomplishments

In 1986 a nonprofit organization, the Wyoming Wetlands Society (WWS), established a captive flock of Trumpeter Swans to use for restoration projects in the western states.

Between 1994 and 2000 the WWS and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department released 71 birds in the Green River drainage of Wyoming, which now accounts for 30-percent of the total number of swans in Wyoming, and nearly 40-percent of the adult swans outside Yellowstone National Park.

In 2000 WWS began to work with the Confederated Salish Kootenai tribe of the Flathead Reservation in northwest Montana. Wyoming Wetlands Society and The Trumpeter Swan Fund released 84 swans over a two-year period, producing the first nesting pair of swans in the Flathead in more than 100 years.

WWS, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the State of Idaho released 27 swans on the Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho, where five pairs now use the refuge, compared to just one pair prior to the release.

Thanks to the participation of federal, state, and local governments, conservation organizations, foundations, and landowners the Trumpeter Swans have been released in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho during the last several years. Thanks to their efforts, it is likely that the Trumpeter Swan will not be listed under the Endangered Species Act. —BACK TO THE TOP

Resource Challenge

The elegant, snowy white Trumpeter Swan is the subject of intense study and concern. Largest of all North American waterfowl, the birds weigh between 20 and 30 pounds, with a wingspan of up to eight feet. Remaining near open water to feed on aquatic plants, trumpeters consume as much as 20 pounds of wet vegetation each day.

Once abundant throughout much of North America, Trumpeters were nearly extinct by 1900. Hunting and habitat changes limited the population to small flocks that lived or migrated through remote areas. The last 200 Trumpeters in the lower 48 states and Canada survived by wintering in the frigid Yellowstone Region, where warm springs kept small areas of water ice free. —BACK TO THE TOP

Project Summary

The captive breeding program is one designed to help keep the Trumpeter Swans from being listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Through its cooperative efforts swan numbers in the Rocky Mountain Region are increasing. —BACK TO THE TOP