[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dear Friends,
We hold dear the sense of community we’ve created with you through the years, to protect cranes and the beautiful, wild places they depend on. Our talented staff worldwide, energized by your passion and loyalty, create the caring culture we enjoy at the International Crane Foundation. Together, we are living through a challenging time facing the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With staff across Asia, Africa, and here in the US, we are focused worldwide to protect the safety and wellbeing of our team, our communities, and of course our cranes too. We’ve been working for weeks enacting our Emergency Response Plan. Our dedicated team meets daily, with a strong sense of urgency.
We feel it’s imperative that we share with you steps we have taken to keep people safe, help stop the spread of COVID-19, and continue caring for cranes.
• We’ve suspended domestic and international travel for all our team.
• We are engaging in social distancing by allowing staff worldwide to work from home.
• We continue to care for our captive cranes, while also protecting staff by limiting access to our headquarters in Baraboo.
• We are suspending sales from our online gift shop, craneshop.org.
• We’ve suspended our educational outreach activities, postponing all on-site field trips, tour groups, classes, and workshops until further notice.
• We’ve postponed upcoming VIP trips led by me and our Co-founder George Archibald.
Federal and state information changes hourly and daily. Our response team is monitoring information from the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and local government officials, to ensure we have the best information, to make informed decisions.
While we all take extraordinary measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, our work to save cranes and wild places continues worldwide. Sandhill and Whooping Cranes are returning to Wisconsin and nesting season will soon begin. We are building extraordinary new conservation partnerships in Africa to protect cranes and improve livelihoods in some of the world’s poorest communities. We are securing the long international flyways that cranes need for their annual migration across East Asia. And much more.
Please know we will continue to work hard to protect our employees, the public, and cranes. And, please keep you and yours safe.
Thank you for your continued loyalty and support.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”27060″ img_size=”medium”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Sincerely,
Rich Beilfuss
President and CEO[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]