This research is published in the latest issue of the journal Waterbirds. Click here to read the abstract.
Throughout the world, cranes time their nesting to wet seasons, ensuring abundant resources for growing families. Migratory species, such as Siberian Cranes in East Asia or Sandhill Cranes in North America, return to their breeding areas as spring returns to northern latitudes, bringing plentiful food for hungry chicks and open water for safe nesting.
When you support crane conservation, you support water, plants, renewal, conservation, animals and people. When you support cranes, you support life on Earth. You can make a difference by donating today.
I was working in Zambia when word came that the United States would pull out of the international Paris Agreement on climate change. Listening to this news with a group of Zambian colleagues, I was saddened. In Zambia, and nearly everywhere we work around the world, climate change is treated as a life or death matter. The prospect of intensely prolonged droughts and water shortages, chronic food insecurity, power outages, coastal land loss under rising seas, and extremely violent storms doesn’t bode well for poor countries like Zambia that lack the resources to adapt to these daunting challenges. These countries have contributed little to global warming but face the brunt of its impacts.
We’ve received updated information regarding the Siberian Cranes found earlier this winter poisoned near their staging area on the Yellow River delta in eastern China.
Professor Qian Fawen, executive deputy director of the National Bird Banding Center of China and secretary general of the United Crane Conservation Committee of China Wildlife Conservation Association contacted us Dec. 11 with new information.
The idea for an Eastern Sarus Crane reintroduction program in Thailand “hatched” at an International Crane Workshop in 1983 hosted by the Government of India and the International Crane Foundation. One year later we presented three pairs of juvenile Australian Sarus Cranes to the Queen of Thailand and the Royal Forestry Department. In 1986, Eastern Sarus Cranes were rediscovered in Vietnam and soon thereafter in Cambodia. Eastern Sarus Cranes, confiscated from animal dealers who purchased cranes in Cambodia, were established at the Bangphra Waterfowl Research Station of the Royal Forestry Department, and subsequently at the Khao Khio Open Zoo and the Khorat Zoo of the Zoological Parks Organization of Thailand. The Australian Sarus were used for avicultural research but never used for captive breeding.
I ride a unicycle and often find myself thinking about balance. I’ve learned I can do all sorts of surprising things when firmly balanced on one wheel… playing hockey, riding marathon distances, or winding down a mountainside on bumpy dirt trails. Conservation is likewise about finding balance in challenging circumstances – that elusive balance that results in win-win solutions for people and wildlife and thereby builds broad public support for conservation.
Media Contact: Betsy Didrickson, Information Services Manager, 608-356-9462 x124
Editor’s note: photos available by emailing Betsy
BARABOO, Wis. – George Archibald, Ph.D., co-founder of the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wis., is one of five finalists for the inaugural Award for Conservation Excellence (ACE) presented by the Banovich Wildscapes Foundation and sponsored by Cabela’s Outdoor Fund, the Cabela Family Foundation, and Bass Pro Shops.
The habitat that first comes to mind when we refer to cranes is wetlands. We immediately think of an expansive amount of water dotted with lilies and lotus, bordered by swaying reeds in which a heron or two skulks, accompanied by the symphony of frogs.
For the Sarus Crane, the imagery is more diverse. In South Asia, these cranes live and nest amid flooded rice paddies, never far from the humdrum of a north Indian village, its farmers and their cattle. They also use the community-owned wetlands on the riverine floodplains, where they are joined by a multitude of waterbird species, alongside cattle, pigs and farmers.
Hooded Crane chick, Opal, on exhibit with her parents at the International Crane Foundation.
This story begins several years ago with a Hooded Crane egg, produced at the International Crane Foundation, and its whirlwind journey across the country to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. The egg was originally intended to hatch at the Denver Zoo, and in fact, a Denver Zoo aviculturist was accompanying the egg when the flight plan was re-routed after a late-breaking update that the Woodland Park Zoo had a pair of Hooded Cranes incubating. That well-travelled egg produced in Baraboo, Wisconsin ended up in the care of a different pair of Hooded Cranes across the country in Seattle!
Although people said the vast Zhalong Marsh in northeast China could never be crossed on foot, biologist Su Liying devised a transect route across the widest and most crane-rich portion. Every year since 2007, Liying has led a team for three arduous days of walking across Zhalong Marsh. Ten years of data trace the results of wetland restoration and recovery.
