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Members of the Wyoming Wetland Society collected 60 trumpeter swan eggs from British Columbia this spring and are incubating them in hopes of releasing the cygnets – and their genes – here.

This is the second year of a three-year project that involves harvesting Canadian swan eggs. Officials hope the birds will not only augment the population of 500 swans that currently live in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, but also help add genetic diversity to the population.

Including a captive breeding program, also run out of Jackson Hole, officials estimate they have will have released 350 birds into the three states by the end of this year.

Drew Reed, executive director Wyoming Wetlands Society, said 59 of the 60 eggs survived the plane ride to Jackson Hole despite bad weather coming over the Tetons. The Trumpeter Swan Fund, a component of the Wyoming Wetland Society, raised money for the project.

Workers used a helicopter and global positioning system technology to collect eggs from trumpeter swan nests near Fort St. John and Fort Nelson, British Columbia. Officials with the program take only two eggs from each nest, typically leaving the nesting pair four eggs to rear on their own.

According to Reed, when “disturbed” nests from 2007 were revisited this year, about 85 percent were still occupied by nesting pairs, about the same percentage of nests that get reoccupied in undisturbed areas. “The sampling indicated that it did not have an effect on the sampled nests,” he said of the egg robbing.

The eggs will be incubated at Wyoming Wetland Society co-founder Bill Long’s house in Jackson. Once the eggs hatch, the cygnets will be held in Kelly at breeder pens. At another holding facility near holding Boyles Hill, seven captive pairs of swans have already hatched 21 cygnets.

The 59 surviving eggs this year should start hatching in about two weeks, Reed said. After a year, the yearlings will be taken to locations that, historically, had good numbers of nesting pairs such as the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwest Montana. Thanks to the Wyoming Wetland Society, Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes at the reservation now have 13 nesting pairs.

In the past, the group has released swans in locations like Blackfoot Valley, east of Missoula, Mont., where swans have had trouble recolonizing on their own. “We’re working on the fringe of the population to add genetic variation,” Reed said.

Since swans usually migrate back to the places where they learn to fly, releasing birds at these “fringe” locations also provides some redundancy in case one trumpeter swan habitat becomes threatened.

“This is all designed to create a migratory flock without putting all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak,” Long said. “So, if there’s a climatic event in one area, it won’t potentially wipe out the population.”

Long said that even though roughly 5,000 trumpeter swans remain in Canadian Rockies, that population of birds typically doesn’t form breeding pairs with birds in the U.S., thereby limiting the amount of genetic exchange that takes place.

Reed said the population of trumpeter swans around Jackson Hole and the Upper Green River Valley appears to be faring well, though researchers have noticed a decline in the numbers of Yellowstone birds.

Reed praised Long and his wife, Kenlin, for their dedication to the project. “They’ve been doing this out of the goodness of their heart on their own time,” he said. “It’s a testament to their dedication.”