One of the most charismatic of the species whose fortunes are surveyed by the CAR project is the Blue Crane. This range-change map depicts the mixed fortunes of this species between the first and second bird atlas projects, SABAP1 and SABAP2. (The colours on this range change map are explained in the SABAP1 vs SABAP2 maps interpretation note.) The news is mixed. All the changes reported here are confirmed by the results of the CAR project. Apart from a handful of Blue Cranes in Etosha in Namibia, this species is endemic to South Africa, in part motivating the choice of this iconic species as the national bird.

This range change map shows that the decreases in the Grassland Biome have been sustained since SABAP1. David Allan, author of the Blue Crane species account in the first atlas wrote: "The grassland biome was the ancestral stronghold, but it has decreased c. 90% in this region [ie by 1997]. The SABAP1 map shows a fragmented distribution and low reporting rates in the grassland biome and shows almost total absence from Transkei and Lesotho, probably resulting from high human population densities. In the grassland biome the main threats are poisoning (prompted by birds feeding in agricultural fields), collisions with overhead transmission lines, and loss of habitat to afforestation, urbanization and crop farming." The range change map is alarmingly RED across the Free State, North-West Province, Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga; this means that it was recorded here in SABAP1, but not yet in SABAP2. The map is predominantly ORANGE across KwaZulu-Natal. The actual decreases in reporting rates between the two atlas projects are shown in the second map; SABAP1 reporting rates are at the top of each quarter degree grid cell, SABAP2 reporting rates at the bottom. Sadly, the fragmented distribution reported by SABAP1 is moving along the highway towards local extinction.

In the wheat-growing area of the Western Cape, both the Overberg and the Swartland, the almost wall-to-wall GREEN shows that increases in reporting rates have been widespread, and in the Swartland these increases have been massive. These are shown on the third map. David Allan noted: "In the fynbos biome it inhabits cereal croplands and cultivated pastures and avoids natural vegetation." In pristine times, the Blue Crane was absent from the Western Cape. Now this region is the stronghold of the species, and the birds are dependent on the present patterns of agricultural land use.

The third area in which the Blue Crane historically occurred was the Karoo. The range change map here is also predominantly GREEN suggesting that the Blue Crane is holding its own in the Karoo.

One of the papers in the 2011 volume of Ornithological Observations describes an expansion even farther north, into Namaqualand in the Northern Cape. These birds were recorded on cereal fields close to farmlands, suggesting that this range expansion, like that in the Western Cape, is associated with the changes in landuse associated with agriculture.