Sorry to hear this. I'm not sure I entirely understand the why of the project, but somebody is making a valiant effort, and this is a terrible thing to happen.
For the past six years, whooping cranes hatched in captivity have been raised at the Necedah refuge by workers who wear crane-like costumes to keep the birds wary of humans.
To see humans walking around dressed up like birds is enough to make any animal wary of humans.
As I understand the purpose of the experiment, it began in the early forties. The idea was to divide the then existing and deminishing whooper population into two flocks, an eastern flock, which would winter in Florida, and a 2-part western flock, which would winter at South Padre Island, Texas and the Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. So if disease or natural calamity wiped out one population, there would still be another flock to restock the population. In all three places, plus a migratory stop-over spot at Alamosa, Colorado, marshes was created, surrounded by carefully cultived fields of gain to provide the whoopers with everything they could want to be happy and flourish through the winters. In late winter, they would return to their northern breeding grounds to breed. To establish in the birds the migratory instinct that would bring them to those artificially created wintering places year after year, wildlife scientists used various methods, which included placing fertile whooper eggs in the nests of Sandhill cranes, which already had those winter places bred in them. The young whoopers would follow the Sandhills on their migratory route and the instinct would be instilled in them. If the whoopers migrated there just once, chances were good that they would return each year. One aspect of that experiment was to use an ultralight, which the birds had been trained to follow, as a lead bird on their initial, hopefully imprinting, journey. It was tricky and not at all precise but for about four decades, it kind of worked. Then, about twenty years ago, it started falling apart. At Bosque del apache, after growing to a maximum population of about 31 whoopers, the population decreased yearly until the population got too small to breed and the experiment was abandoned. There are still a few whoopers South Padre Island. I don't know the current status of the Florida flock. Anyway, that's how I understand it. Birds are freaky and once a population slides past a certain point, it's really hard to restore it. It's hard not to preach about these things but obviously everytime we lose one of these critters, our lives are poorer.