Court reverses ruling on whooping cranes' deaths

A federal appellate court Monday reversed a 2013 U.S. District Court decision that found the state responsible for killing 23 whooping cranes by withholding water from the lower reaches of the Guadalupe River where the endangered birds spend winter. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality were not responsible because the deaths were not foreseeable as a result of the state’s water policy on freshwater inflows into the San Antonio Bay system. The world’s last wild flock of whooping cranes, which numbers about 300, spends each winter in the bay’s estuary within or near the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. The estuary relies on freshwater for its overall health and for the survival of blue crabs, the majestic bird’s primary food source. The Aransas Project, a nonprofit group that advocates responsible water management for the Guadalupe River, filed a federal lawsuit following the die-off, claiming the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality violated the Endangered Species Act. In 2013, Senior U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack, in a 124-page opinion, upheld the group’s claim that the state was at least partially to blame for a 2009 whooping crane die-off in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The appellate court disagreed fully in its decision, referring to the district court’s action as an “abuse of discretion.” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott hailed the decision as a significant win for the State of Texas. He wrote in a news release Monday that the reversal is especially good for farmers, ranchers, and communities along the Guadalupe and Blanco rivers who would have been irreparably harmed by the lower court’s ruling...more