The Fall and Rise of Trumpeter Swans

A story inspired by a photo

One January, Mary took this engaging photo of a mated pair of trumpeter swans. She came upon them in a state park well north of Yellowstone National Park but still within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The togetherness that the photo captures inspired me to learn more about trumpeters. I found a fascinating story of their fall and rise.

The trumpeter population began to fall nationally in the 1600s when colonists started hunting them for meat to put on the table; for feathers to decorate hats and write with; and for skins to turn into powder puffs. By the 1800s, as settlers advanced west, the trumpeter population continued to fall with the overhunting of muskrats and beavers since trumpeters often nest on structures those rodents build. As ever more settlers arrived, the wetland habitats where trumpeters eat and nest diminished, further reducing the population. By 1935, trumpeters had been nearly wiped out in the Lower 48.

Thankfully, conservationists acknowledged this crisis and went to work. Their efforts paid off; the rise began, but not everywhere. Trumpeter numbers are rising in the Rockies, stable in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, but have declined within Yellowstone National Park. 

The park’s resident trumpeter population peaked at seventy-two in 1961. But by 2010 biologists found only four trumpeters. They teamed up with park officials to save the swans. In one project biologists have released thirty-five cygnets, young trumpeters, into Yellowstone over the last seven years. They hope the birds will bond with their release location, return each year, breed, and eventually increase the park’s population.

Pondering this population problem, biologists have concluded that Yellowstone now provides only marginal conditions for nesting. In 2019, for example, while more than twenty swans were counted in the park, only two pairs nested. One park official gives three reasons—all human caused—for deteriorating nesting conditions: climate change, bald eagle predation, and park visitation.

Climate change causes wet, cold springs that make nesting difficult for trumpeters. Climate change also produces warmer summer temperatures and drought that dry up wetlands and reduce the amount of much-needed aquatic vegetation. Two trumpeter parents need three to five tons of vegetation to feed themselves and four young from June’s hatching to September when the cygnets can fly away, according to one expert. 

Bald eagle predation of trumpeters began after humans illegally introduced lake trout into Yellowstone Lake. When that invasive fish devoured the native cutthroat trout that bald eagles had depended upon, hungry eagles went looking for meals elsewhere. They found trumpeter cygnets. While trumpeters are North America’s largest native waterfowl—they can have an eight-foot wingspan and weigh as much as a coyote—they have not been able to protect all their young from attacking eagles.

The number and actions of Yellowstone Park visitors are major reasons for deterioration in nesting conditions. Trumpeters—that often mate for life—are extremely sensitive to human disturbance near their nests along the shorelines of a few shallow lakes in the park. When excited visitors encroach, trumpeter parents may desert their nest and young. Or they may move the family away from visitors and into the middle of the lake—where bald eagles can take some of the cygnets. To reduce conflict, the park has closed trumpeter nesting areas to visitors.

One such protected nesting area is Swan Lake, just south of Mammoth Hot Springs. The lake was named in 1879, according to the book Yellowstone Place Names, because it was covered with ducks and swans. While those days are gone, a few trumpeters still visit this small, shallow lake. And this year a very special event occurred: for the first time since 1966, cygnets hatched and fledged at Swan Lake.

Within days of hatching, the four cygnets left the nest and followed their parents into the water to learn how to feed and fly. The young ones practiced taking off and landing every day.

When the lake began to freeze over, the parents took off in search of open water. Three of the young were able to take off and fly with them. The fourth cygnet had not yet mastered take off and was left behind, alone on the frozen lake surface—a possible death sentence. Luckily, the weather warmed, the lake surface thawed, and the abandoned youngster was able to find food and survive on its own.

In an unusual turn of events, the family flew back about a week and a half later and reunited with the loner. When the fourth cygnet was finally able to take off, the family left again, this time together.

Here’s hoping they return to Yellowstone to breed and help the park’s fallen trumpeter population continue to rise.

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Photo of swans by Mary Strickroth