The only natural wild whooping crane flock migrates to which Texas wildlife refuge each winter?

The only natural wild whooping crane flock migrates to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge each winter.

The Aransas–Wood Buffalo population breeds in and around Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Canada, then travels roughly 2,500 miles south through the Great Plains. It winters along Texas’s Gulf Coast, especially on and around Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Rockport.

The flock was perilously close to extinction: only about 15 birds remained in 1941. Habitat protection, legal safeguards, and intensive conservation helped it recover, with an estimated 557 cranes wintering on the Texas coast in the 2024–2025 season.

A common mix-up is treating Aransas as the cranes’ year-round home. It is their wintering destination; their principal breeding grounds are in Canada. Other whooping crane groups exist, but this is the only naturally occurring, self-sustaining migratory flock.