[Announcer reading program information] [regal-sounding music] [brass instrument fanfare] [snare drum] [triumphant conclusion notes] [Music ends] [Sounds of cranes] 55 million years.

That's how long cranes have been a part of this planet Earth's biological community.

And until a hundred years ago, their trumpeting flight through the sky seemed assured for another 55 million years.

[Music] Now, one after another, the 15 crane species are plunging toward the abyss of extinction.

[Music] [Sound of cranes] In 1973, American Ron Sowie on the left and Canadian George Archibald on the right made an extraordinary life commitment to save the cranes of the world.

At that time, there was no institution which could adequately channel their energies.

So they started their own, the International Crane Foundation.

This is a directional antenna that we use to get the general locality.

It feeds into this box?

Yes, it feeds right into the scanner.

It gives us almost the exact direction the whooping crane is.

However, in 1973, the most endangered of the crane species was the great white whooping crane.

And Canadian and United States scientists were already embarking on a startling new experiment to increase the number of birds in the wild.

With whooping cranes reduced to a single flock breeding in Canada and wintering in Texas, it was decided to establish a second flock using the more common sandhill cranes as foster parents.

Hooper eggs were substituted for sandhill crane eggs on their Idaho nests.

The sandhills would hatch and raise the whooping crane chicks, and then in the fall, guide them to their wintering grounds here in New Mexico.

During the first five years of operation, 17 whooping cranes have been foster parented by this technique.

Of particular interest to Ron and George were the program's key elements, captive red whooping cranes supplying eggs, an aggressive public awareness campaign, and extensive field research on the sandhill crane, elements upon which the International Crane Foundation would build.

In order to comprehend the difficulties facing the International Crane Foundation, you have to understand something about cranes in the wild.

Among the 15 species, perhaps the most studied has been the North American greater sandhill crane, Canadensis, the oldest bird species on Earth.

For millions of years, sandhill cranes have been joined by other waterfowl, geese and ducks, on their wintering grounds across the southern third of the United States.

It's a time of physical restoration, a building up of energy resources for the long migration and breeding season ahead.

Sometime in mid-March, after a 1,500 mile journey, sandhill cranes return once again to the wetlands of central Wisconsin.

More than any other animal, crane biology is based on the pair unit.

Tremendous amounts of energy are spent solidifying the pair bond to the point where a well-mated pair behaves like a single bird.

Early in early spring, new pairs arrive, searching out breeding territories.

It's a brief but turbulent time when established pairs have to expel intruders.

Because of the lethal potential of their beaks, cranes have evolved elaborate systems of communication which avoid body contact.

Territories are defended by unison calls and body postures.

To breed successfully, they must defend a certain acreage of wetland.

The male easily drives off territorial intruders with threat displays, such as threat walking.

Sandhills, when they arrive on their breeding grounds, have just come out of a long period of sexual dormancy.

Consequently, they must engage in activities like unison calling and body painting, which bring about a renewed sexual synchrony.

And, of course, there's the most spectacular of all, the mating dance.

[music] By mid-April, a pair has built a shallow nest in the most secluded corner of their territory.

Just a simple platform, the nest is built out of surrounding materials.

The male and female share about equally in incubating time.

As one bird arrives, the other leaves.

The cranes usually lay just two eggs.

During an exchange of incubating duties, the arriving bird turns the eggs.

The reason is to keep the embryo centered properly in the shell so that the delicate membranes don't dry out in contact with the egg shell.

The eggs are actually incubated against a brood patch, a hot spot on the crane's breast where the temperature is about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

A stint on the nest lasts between three and four hours, giving the other bird a chance to hunt for food.

After about 30 days of incubation, the first chick hatches.

Again, both male and female share in raising the young.

It is during the ensuing period that a pair's wetland territory plays its most critical role.

[crane sounds] The cranes now adopt a predator strategy atop the food pyramid.

There must be thousands of small insects, amphibians, and fish to supply enough protein for the rapidly growing chicks.

If water levels in the marsh should recede, or if the territory is too small, the likelihood is that only one chick will survive beyond the first few days.

By summer, the family is moved out of the marsh into an upland environment for their foraging.

Today, this usually means farmland.

Here they find abundant insects and seeds, just as cranes must have found in the prairies before settlement.

About the time the young chick first tests its wings, a dramatic change in behavior takes place.

Birds that were once territorial and hostile suddenly begin flocking.

At the end of the fall, sandhills gather in the larger wetlands throughout the area and form a group strategy for finding food, predator protection, and finally, migration to their wintering grounds.

This was a time in the 1930s when the Great Lakes region almost lost its sandhill cranes.

Hunting and drought reduced their numbers to a mere 200 birds.

However, conservation measures came just in time, so that today we can rejoice in the massive staging of 15,000 sandhills in northern Indiana.

Other crane species have not fared as well.

Here's John Sowie.

Within the last two centuries, wetlands have disappeared over most of the planet, and with them have gone the large populations of cranes which once existed on this planet.

In fact, the whole crane family now, which consists of 15 species, is now an endangered family.

In 1971, I met Canadian George Archibald at Cornell University, and we had lengthy discussions about what could be done to save cranes in the world.

As kids, both George and I had raised wild birds in captivity, and we knew from our own experience that it was possible to produce many more offspring from wild birds in captivity than they would normally produce in the wild.

So we decided to start a facility to raise cranes in captivity.

Ron Sowie's father had just vacated the family's Arabian horse ranch north of Baraboo, Wisconsin.

It was perfect.

Okay, the red on their heads will develop as they grow, and will become quite red as they get to be adults and get into the breeding condition.

You notice the ruffle that they have.

What they needed was an expansive facility that could house hundreds of cranes, yet could serve as a base for the educational effort that they would have to undertake to gain financial support.

An urgent need was to make ICF a species bank for all the cranes of the world.

That way, if a species were to be wiped out in the wild, there would be a source of genetic stock to reintroduce them in their native habitat.

In order to do this, Ron and George would have to learn how to breed all 15 species of cranes.

The plan was to approach zoos.

Zoos had cranes, but they rarely bred.

Armed with the argument that their knowledge of crane behavior could solve the crane breeding problems, George was able to convince zoos throughout the world to loan them their birds.

At first we were concerned about the northern location of our new crane facility.

How would the cranes be able to tolerate the severe Wisconsin winters?

We soon found that cranes could take any kind of cold weather seemingly without any difficulty.

But that was not the point.

We could keep cranes in captivity, but what hadn't been done up until this point was to consistently breed these birds regularly, year after year.

Here our scientific training at Cornell came in very handy.

We knew, for instance, that birds that breed at far northern locations, like many of the rare species of cranes, could be induced to lay eggs by a long photoperiod.

We could increase the photoperiod of these birds artificially by turning on large floodlights at dawn and at dusk.

This seemed to work.

For instance, we raised hooded cranes here, a bird which breeds in far northern Siberia for the first time using this technique.

We also found that some birds, such as the brolga, breed during monsoon.

So we artificially gave a monsoon to these birds by using a sprinkler system and flooding their pen twice a day with water.

Once a crane starts laying eggs in captivity, we take the eggs as soon as they appear.

This induces the bird to lay many more eggs than they would normally lay in the wild.

This is our primary justification for captive propagation.

It permits a rapid increase in the numbers of these normally slowly reproducing birds.

Of course, once a crane lays three or four times the normal number of eggs, we can't expect it to hatch the eggs itself.

So at the International Crane Foundation, we use artificial incubation quite a bit, although we find that artificial incubators don't incubate nearly as well as the birds themselves.

The actual hatching of a crane chick takes 24 to 36 hours.

[Crane sounds] Once we've hatched cranes in captivity, we have a whole new set of problems.

Cranes are precocial.

They follow their parents around shortly after they're hatched.

If we confine them to too small of an area, they don't get any exercise, they get too fat, and then they begin to have leg problems.

To avoid this problem, we enlist the help of volunteers, young men and women who come to the Crane Foundation in the summer and act as foster parents for these young birds.

During this period of sudden species extinction worldwide, captive breeding appears to be a necessary precaution.

Success has come slowly, particularly with birds of the southern hemisphere, but there doesn't seem to be any insurmountable problem on the way to ultimate triumph in producing and maintaining a captive gene pool for each and every bird.

[Crane sounds] At least that was the hope with the arrival of Dr. Zhou Hin Cheng from the People's Republic of China.

Dr. Cheng would pave the way for obtaining the rare black-necked crane, the one species missing from the ICF breeding flocks.

Dr. Cheng is typical of the international traffic that passes through Baraboo and comes away with a large dose of Ron's and George's enthusiasm for crane conservation.

We'd like you to look at this box that we hope to transport Negrocolus eggs in from China.

This is a box that we've used successfully a number of times for different species, and this is what we use to bring Siberian crane eggs from Siberia.

It worked just fine.

We also brought six common crane eggs from Sweden and all six hatched.

So we have 13 fertile eggs.

Next, Tibet, we hope.

One of the bonuses of working with the crane family is that this is a cosmopolitan group of birds.

Cranes are found everywhere in the world, but in South America and Antarctica.

In Africa, there are four species which breed there.

In Australia, two.

But when we get to Asia, we find the richest variety of cranes.

There are seven species of cranes which breed in Asia.

And Asia is where ICF has concentrated its efforts, particularly in Japan, where it received its baptism in international troubleshooting.

(speaking Japanese) Cranes have played a prominent role in Japanese culture, in their art, and in their religion.

For many years, cranes and man lived side by side on the Japanese islands until the tumultuous Meiji era in 1877.

The once-protected cranes were slaughtered, their wetlands destroyed.

By the turn of the century, the magnificent Japanese or red-crowned crane was thought to be extinct.

(bells ringing) In 1925, however, a small relic population of red-crowned cranes was found surviving in a remote corner of Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido.

The native Ainu held the birds to be the "gods of the marsh" and had saved them.

With the return to stability, the Japanese people again protected the birds.

Locals, like Mrs. Watanabe, began the practice of feeding the birds, a practice that was still going on when George Archibald arrived in 1972 to study the red-crowned crane.

At that time, it was believed that the cranes merely wintered on Hokkaido, crossing the Sea of Japan to breed.

Dr. Hiroyuki Masatomi, here, knew that a few birds were nesting in nearby Kushiro Marsh, perhaps the largest wetland in Asia.

He conveyed this information to George, and an aerial survey was conducted.

To everyone's surprise, they found 53 nests.

The entire red-crowned crane population of 250 birds was a non-migratory flock breeding in Hokkaido's wetlands.

This news sent shockwaves through Japanese society.

There were elaborate plans to develop the marshes.

For George and his Japanese colleagues, there was only one answer.

The wetlands must be preserved.

Hemmed in by the ocean on one side and by the marsh on the other, Kushiro is a rapidly expanding population of a half a million people.

Once a fishing port, Kushiro has become the paper manufacturing capital of Japan.

It is a city in need of expansion land.

To George, who would return every year, controlling the growth of Kushiro meant learning how to work within the Japanese system, something ICF would have to repeat in every country where there were cranes.

In a country such as a dictatorship, such as South Korea, when I worked there, or Iran, if the government became interested in one great sweep, they could make an area protected.

In a country such as Japan, where there's democracy, in order to get conservation programs implemented, it takes a tremendous amount of time.

It has to go through all the legislative processes.

I am disappointed that conservation measures for wetland protection have not happened quicker.

But that's through my own naivety, because things take a lot of time to develop in the Japanese system.

[announcement in Japanese] [crow cawing] [music] [crow cawing] [music] [crow cawing] [music] [crane calling] The Japanese love their grains.

But land is scarce, a rare commodity.

It is an irreconcilable conflict in the Japanese psyche.

So if the birds are going to survive in the wild, the preservation of the Hokkaido marshes will have to be accepted by the whole of Japanese society, from the emperor to the schoolchildren who count the cranes on census day.

Some of the wetlands have been protected and an ICF branch in Japan established.

Ultimately, they will decide the fate of the birds, as George has learned.

The most important work of the International Crane Foundation is working with people.

We try to catalyze new programs, sometimes between politically polarized countries, sometimes between organizations within a country.

It's very important that we establish this atmosphere of trust and friendship with these people.

After we leave, the programs then continue.

We measure the effectiveness of our programs not in what we achieve while in the country, but what happens after we leave.

The most endangered of the crane species is not the American Hooper, nor the Japanese Red-crowned crane, but another of the great white birds, the Siberian crane.

This year, there are only 30 Siberian cranes at the Burdettpore Bird Sanctuary.

Each winter, fewer arrive, and soon they may be gone forever, the end of a million years of annual pilgrimage to this subcontinent.

In the northwestern corner of India is the Ghana Bird Sanctuary.

Wintering grounds are one of the three remaining flocks of the Siberian crane.

While George went to Japan, Ron Sawey concentrated on the Siberian cranes.

What he found was that the birds were decreasing at an alarming rate.

Specialized tuber feeders, the Siberians require shallow wetlands throughout their life cycle.

But the most important factor in their decline has been that their migratory routes traverse volatile and warring nations, such as Iran, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union.

In the early 1960s, the Soviets had discovered the breeding areas of the cranes in the heart of the Siberian tundra.

The only hope for a captive breeding flock was to get eggs from the wild birds.

Vladimir Flint, the Russian ornithologist who had located the nests, agreed to collect eggs from the Siberian cranes and ship them to the International Crane Foundation in Wisconsin for hatching.

In 1977, four eggs arrived.

Two were fertile.

They were followed the next year by seven more eggs.

Four hatched.

With the Siberian cranes so close to extinction, there was an urgency to establish a captive flock.

[flute music] Once aware of the problems and the possible solutions, the Soviets were eager to assist the ICF in preserving the species.

She laid seven eggs this year, but none of the chicks hatched.

We had two chicks that died before hatching.

[speaking russian] A plan was drawn up whereby the Russians would duplicate the breeding facilities developed in Barabu on the Oka State Preserve, southeast of Moscow.

Ornithologists came to Barabu to learn breeding techniques, such as artificial insemination.

[speaking russian] There we go.

And then draw that up in this one CC syringe.

In addition, ICF supplied the Soviet facility with incubators, and they specially developed crane food.

There is now a second captive flock of young breeder birds in the Soviet Union, and they have plans to reintroduce them into the wild.

[speaking russian] [clanking] The real threat, however, is that the birds are heavily hunted in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And with the decline of the east-west detente, who knows how long the International Crane Foundation will be able to maintain its working relationship with the Russians.

[speaking russian] OK.

So what are the prospects for endangered animals like the Siberian crane?

Ironically, the gray saurus, here the largest crane, has co-adapted with humans, learning to live and breed on tiny wetlands amidst India's millions of people.

[birds chirping] [chirping] [music playing] [chirping] If the Ghana sanctuary succumbs to agricultural pressure, the saurus cranes will survive.

The Siberians won't.

For the Siberian crane, perhaps the solution lies in a new flock, like the hoopers, that will travel over safe migration routes.

[chirping] And what of the International Crane Foundation itself?

Is it any more than the fancy medical apparatus that keeps the body alive long after the spirit has died?

Only if there is hope, hope that the birds can survive in the wild.

The one thing that is clear is that by doing nothing, there is no hope that once again cranes and man can live in harmony.

[music playing] [chirping] [music playing] for a transcript of this program.