cc  >> Good afternoon and welcome to  "History Sandwiched In."  Today we have kind of a special  treat, we have as our speaker  today David Sakrison.  He's an author, especially on  topics like aviation,  healthcare, government issues  and he's here to speak about his  latest book.  He's been all over as an author,  to Alaska, to the Iditarod, he's  been to the Everglades, British  Columbia where he fought a  forest fire, and has ranged as  far as Baraboo, Wisconsin, where  he wrestled a tiger.  Ask him about it later.  (laughter)  No kidding.  But this project was  commissioned by Terry Kohler of  the Kohler family.  You know of Kohler, Wisconsin,  the large plumbing, high-end  plumbing, shall we say.  And the Kohler family is  involved for 20 years in  conservation efforts of large  migratory birds, and Terry  Kohler commissioned our speaker  to write a book about these  efforts to conserve and  replenish very, very much  endangered species.  So please let's welcome to  "History Sandwiched In" David  Sakrison.  (applause)  >> Thank you, very much. 

 We need to bring that down a  little.  People ask me about that tiger.  I have to tell you that in 30  years as a writer I've learned  that the experience is the best  teacher and curiosity is the  best excuse and I found out if  you grab a tiger by the tail you  get 40 to 50 times the  information you'd get just from  asking somebody about it.  (laughter)  So it's well worth  the effort.  Cranes have been revered by  human beings for as long as  humans and cranes have been in  contact.  Wherever you find cranes and  humans brushing shoulders with  each other the culture will have  a crane dance that celebrates  loyalty, longevity and grace.  But we haven't always revered  them or treated them with  reverence.  Out of the 15 crane species in  the world seven of them are  endangered, several of them  seriously endangered.  The whooping crane is the most  endangered of the 15 crane  species.  They were probably never a very  common crane. 

 The whooping crane is native to  North America, but they were  probably never really common.  The estimates are before  Europeans came to North America  there were probably about 10,000  whooping cranes on the  continent.  Compare that with today's  reduced population of sandhill  cranes which stands at about  650,000.  There were probably more than a  million of them on the continent  before Europeans showed up.  Once the Europeans got here, as  they started cutting down the  forests and particularly  draining the wetlands moving  westward, the cranes  disappeared.  Their wetlands were gone.  Whooping cranes, in particular,  are very finicky about the kinds  of environment they inhabit and  as their wetlands were drained,  they disappeared.  In some places like Iowa 90% of  the historic wetlands are gone.  By 1946 they were, oops, by 1946  they were considered very rare.  In 1941 the entire world  population of wild whooping  cranes was 14 birds. 

 They were living in, they were  wintering in a place called  Aransas National Wildlife Refuge  down in Texas near Corpus  Christi, right on the coast.  Nobody knew where they spent  their summers or where they had  their nests.  Somewhere up in Canada but  nobody knew.  They were federally protected  from hunting in 1918 by the  predecessor of the, what in 1973  would become the Endangered  Species Act.  That and conservation their  numbers gradually started to  rise after World War II but  still very small.  In the 1950s their nesting area  was found almost by accident in  a place called Wood Buffalo  National Park which is up in the  northeastern corner of Alberta.  It's one of the remotest parks  in Canada and they were in one  of the remotest corners of the  park.  But some firefighters stumbled  across the birds and eventually  after a couple of years they  were able to identify the nests,  tag the birds and determine that  this was, in fact, the range for  the birds.  So by the mid '50s we're talking  about probably 20 to 30 birds in  this single flock that are  migrating 2500 miles from Wood  Buffalo Park down to Aransas  every year.  In the 1960s biologists began  collecting eggs from Wood  Buffalo Park. 

 Whoopers normally lay two eggs a  year and raise one chick to  fledge.  Both eggs will usually hatch but  only one chick will survive to  fledge.  So they figured if they took one  of the eggs from the nest that  it wouldn't affect the birds'  productivity which, in fact,  turned out to be the case.  The years that they collected  eggs there were actually more  chicks that survived to fledge  than when they didn't collect  eggs.  This chick is just emerged from  the egg.  It's a process that takes about  48 hours.  It's extremely exhausting to the  bird and not all chicks survive  that process.  The birds were taken back to, or  the eggs were taken back to the  Patuxent Wildlife Research  Station in Laurel, Maryland.  It's a USGS research station.  And they established a captive  breeding program to both study  the birds and eventually the aim  was to return some of them to  the wild. 

 In 1975 a chick named Dawn was  the first chick to be hatched at  Aransas, the first chick to come  from birds that had come from  eggs that had come from Wood  Buffalo Park.  She was also the first chick to  be, first whooping crane to be  produced through artificial  insemination.  She died after a few days but  the fact that she had been  hatched at all was a major step  forward.  Oops, I'm getting ahead of  myself here.  Let's back up.  1975, there were 49 whoopers  that went from Wood Buffalo to  Aransas that year.  Eight of them were youngsters.  None of the youngsters were lost  in migration that year.  On a 2500-mile migration it was  very common for some of the  youngest birds to be lost in  route but in 1975 all eight  birds, all eight youngsters that  had been counted up at Wood  Buffalo made it.  Still, of course, 49 birds is a  very small flock for a world  population. 

 They needed to create another  flock.  One flock alone is very  vulnerable to natural or human  made disaster, disease,  whatever.  If a virus ran through that  flock it could send the flock  into extinction overnight.  So the idea was to create at  least one more new flock that  would be geographically isolated  from the existing wild flock.  They needed to create a new  nesting ground, to establish new  nesting grounds, new wintering  grounds and a new migration  route.  All of it would be isolated from  the existing whoopers.  They decided that the best way  to do this would be to use  sandhill cranes.  A place called Grays Lake Idaho  was another wildlife reserve,  home to about 20,000 sandhills.  And they migrate each year from  Grays Lake down to New Mexico.  Sandhills had been used at  Patuxent as foster parents for  whooper eggs that were brought  from Wood Buffalo Park. 

 So they knew that sandhills  would raise these whooper eggs.  So they began putting whooper  eggs in wild sandhill nests out  at Grays Lake.  Between 1975 and 1989, 287  whooper eggs were placed in wild  sandhill nests.  210 of them hatched, 85 of them  survived to fledge.  And those 85 birds all migrated  south with the sandhills and  migrated back the following  spring.  So that seemed to be working.  They were accepted by their  foster parents they learned the  migration route.  They learned the stop-overs and  it seemed to be the way to  establish a new flock.  There was one problem.  When it came time to mate the   male whoopers went looking for  mates among the female  sandhills. 

 Now the sandhills, to us their  mating dances look very much  alike but to the birds they're  completely different.  The female sandhills look at the  male whoopers and said you know,  it was all well and good to be  in the same play pen with these  funny looking cousins but to  actually raise a family, well  that's out of the question.  (laughter)  The female whoopers  were being ignored so they  didn't go through the hormonal  changes that the mating  behaviors trigger so they  weren't building nests, they  weren't doing anything.  And the end result, no little  whoopers.  The whoopers that had been  raised by the sandhills survived  as part of the flock.  And migrated with them year  after year, but they weren't  producing any little ones.  One of the biologists summed up  the program.  He said cross-fostering out at  Grays Lake was a really, really  terrific idea with only one  disadvantage: it didn't work  with a damn.  (laughter)  There was one hybrid  that may have shown up.  In 1992 a ranger spotted a bird  that looked kind of gray, kind  of white, black wing tips, could  have been something between a  whooper and a sandhill but they  were never able to catch it and  confirm. 

 There was one that was raised by  artificial insemination out at  Patuxent.  They wanted to find out if we  end up with a hybrid what's it's  going to look like.  So they made it using artificial  insemination.  They crossed a whooper and a  sandhill and came up with a bird  that looked a little bit like  both of them and sounded a  little bit like both of them.  He was infertile but he survived  and was healthy and turned out  to be a very good foster parent.  So the question is how do you  create a flock?  If creating a flock within the  sandhills doesn't work, if you  have to create a flock  independently.  We know we can raise the birds,  we can hatch them, incubate  them, raise them in isolation we  can return them to the wild.  They were already establishing a  non-migratory flock down in  Kissimmee Prairie, Florida, for  study and to see how the birds  would do there.  But how do you teach them  migration?  Songbirds when they migrate are  hard wired.  They know instinctively when to  go, where to go and how do get  there. 

 Whooping cranes have an  instinctive urge to migrate but  they learn when, where and how  from their parents, and if you  don't have any parents to teach  them or if the foster parents  will teach them but then they  don't produce any little  whoopers, what are you going to  do?  Kent Clegg was a biologist in  Idaho who had worked out at  Grays Lake and heard about a  couple of Canadians up in  Toronto who were teaching Canada  geese to follow an ultralight.  You may have seen or heard of  the movie "Come On Geese."  Bill Lishman and Joe Duff  produced it back in 1989.  Kent thought if they can do it  with geese I ought to be able to  do it with cranes.  He already had a pet crane, a  sandhill that followed his  pickup truck around the farm.  And he said, okay, let's try it  with sandhills.  So he went out and picked up a  couple of eggs at Grays Lake and  raised a bunch of sandhills to  imprint on him.  Kent does an excellent imitation  of a sandhill brood call.  And he got the birds, he said he  did everything including  sleeping in their pen to make  sure that they would follow him  around.  Got them to follow his  ultralight around the farm, made  some video of it and sent it to  the US Fish and Wildlife  Service.  And they said this looks like an  interesting idea but we'd like  you to, he said can we do this  with whoopers and they said we'd  like you to do this with  sandhills first because they're  not endangered and if everything  goes terribly wrong that's not a  problem. 

 So in 1990 he began planning a  trip from his ranch up in Grays,  Idaho, down to Bosque Del Apache  National Wildlife Refuge in New  Mexico.  It's about an 800-mile trip down  the spine of the Rockies.  Bosque Del Apache is a winter  home to about 100,000 birds  including about 20,000  sandhills.  So he figured that that would be  a good place to try to  reintegrate the birds into a  wild flock.  He raised 18 chicks from eggs,  or they hatched 18 chicks from  eggs collected at Grays Lake.  And he got them to imprint on  him just enough to follow him.  The idea was he wanted them to  follow him but he also wanted  them to imprint on each other  primarily.  So during the day he would take  them out of the pen, take them  out to the cornfield, let them  forage and then he'd disappear.  And the birds would spend most  of the day by themselves.  And it seemed to work. 

 They would follow him when he  called but if he wasn't there  they were fine.  They were depending on each  other.  Then he started training them  with the ultralight.  He would taxi the ultralight  past their pen at first to get  them used to the noise and then  once they started getting ready  to fledge he would taxi the  ultralight around the farm and  they would follow it on the  ground and then as they started  to fly he would lift off and it  took him a couple of days to get  themselves sorted out but within  a couple of days they were  happily following the ultralight  around the farm.  There were a couple of mishaps.  One of the birds stumbled into  the propeller which is on the  back of the airplane and was  killed instantly.  They quickly rigged a screen to  keep that from happening again.  One of the birds stumbled into  the landing gear, got tangled up  in the landing gear and lost a  foot.  That bird survived and did fine.  Actually survived to a fairly  old age as a pet but was out of  the program. 

 One bird was lost in an eagle  attack on the farm during one of  their practice flights.  Two died of unknown causes,  probably respiratory problems  which are very common.  And one was kicked out for  insubordination.  (laughter)  By the summer's end  his birds were following his  ultralight around the farm on  flights of about 25 miles.  So in October 1995 Kent and 11  sandhills took off for Bosque  Del Apache.  They had two ultralights, two  aircrafts, Kent's ultralight  which led the birds and another  aircraft that followed flew top  cover, it would do dog fights  with eagles to chase them away,  scouted ahead for landing sights  and so on.  And three vehicles on the  ground.  Two chase vehicles to gather the  birds up if they got dispersed,  and one heavy vehicle to pull a  trailer that carried their  temporary cage.  The routine was that during the  day they would start out their  first flight about 9:00 o'clock  in the morning.  They'd fly for about an hour or  so. 

 And then land.  During the day they'd pen the  birds to keep the local critters  away from them.  And then if the winds died down  again in the afternoon they'd  fly another hour or two in the  afternoon and cover between 25  and 125 miles on any given day.  A lot of biologists said this  was not going to work.  That it just can't work.  Because when whoopers, when all  cranes migrate they migrate by  catching a thermal, a rising  column of warm air, and they  spiral up to a mile or more  above the ground and then they  glide for miles and miles and  miles.  These birds have an eight foot  wing span and they weigh about  13-pounds.  It makes for a very, very good  glider.  They don't flap their wings the  way geese do.  Geese are flappers. 

 The whoopers are gliders.  Well, the ultralight can't do  that.  The ultralight can't climb  thermals and then glide the way  cranes do.  It's got to fly pretty much  straight and level and the  biologists said that won't work.  What they didn't take into  account is that an aircraft,  when it moves through the air,  creates a pressure wave just out  ahead of the wing that flows up  over the wing and then off both  the ends of the wings and the  trailing edge.  And the birds learned to surf,  literally surf on that pressure  wave.  So they can hang just in front  or just above the wing and  literally glide on that pressure  wave.  It took some flapping to  maintain position but it was a  lot less than it would take if  they were simply flying along by  themselves.  They arrived at Bosque Del  Apache after 11 days.  748 miles. 

 They had one day down for  weather.  23 hours of actual flight time.  When they got there, Kent led  them out into a field near a  large flock of wild cranes and  then disappeared into the corn.  And the birds integrated into  that wild flock and spent the  winter with them and the next  spring they migrated back north  with the wild birds.  They didn't go back to the  ranch, they went back to the  nesting areas that the wild  flocks would use.  But it had worked.  They had raised the birds,  taught them the migration route,  they had migrated back on their  own and then the following years  they continued to migrate.  So he said, okay, US Fish and  Wildlife Service let me do it  with whoopers.  And they said it might have been  a fluke.  We want you to do that again. 

 So he did it again.  In 1996, a group of seven  cranes.  The bird again integrated well  into the wild flock.  Three of them were lost to  predators but four of them  migrated back and again it was a  success.  In the spring of, there was one,  the first trip down with the  first cranes in 1995, the  biggest problem they had was  eagle attacks.  Golden eagles generally attack  from up high and behind, dive  down into their pray, hit them  hard and drive them to the  ground.  Two of the cranes were hit by  eagles on the way down on the  first trip.  On the second trip they had some  close calls but there were no  eagle attacks, no successful  attacks.  On the second trip one of the  birds got tangled up, you can't  really see them, but there are  flying wires up here that brace  the wing.  And one of the birds got tangled  up in the flying wires and got  tossed ass over tea kettle in  the slip stream but recovered  and appeared to be uninjured. 

 So in the spring of 1997 he  began working with a mixed  group, whoopers and sandhills.  The whoopers that he was going  to led down had to integrate  into a flock of 20,000 sandhills  so he figured he better start  them out in a mixed group.  They got along fine.  They left on October 12th and  they seemed to do okay.  They kind of each held their  own party, it would be whoopers  on one wing and sandhills on the  other.  But they did fine.  There were some eagle attacks  but none successful.  On the eighth day out they were  flying across northern New  Mexico and four 516 fighters  went over at low altitude at  close to supersonic speed and  the birds are gone.  But they managed to round them  all up without anybody landing  and got them back into the line  and down to Bosque Del Apache.  They landed on day nine. 

 All of the birds, whoopers and  sandhills, were integrated into  the wild flock and they all,  four of them, I'm sorry I'm  getting my numbers mixed up  here.  Yeah, all four of them survived  the winter and migrated back the  following spring.  Again with the sandhills.  Not back to the ranch but back  to the wild birds' summering  spots.  So he proved the concept.  And now it was time to begin  thinking about where are we  going to create a new flock.  They wanted to do it away from  the Rockies because that was too  close to the Aransas flock.  And eventually they chose  Wisconsin and Florida as the end  points.  Necedah Wildlife Refuge is again  a sandhill habitat.  Chassahowitzka National Wildlife  Refuge on the gulf coast in  Florida, sandhills and also the  habitat of the soft-shell crab  which is a major winter food for  the cranes down at Aransas. 

 They're very protein rich and  the birds can really build up a  lot of strength for their  springtime migration north.  So they chose these two areas.  The folks who were going to do  the migration were the same  folks that did the Canada geese  back in 1989, Joe Duff and Bill  Lishman, who had since created  an organization called Operation  Migration.  They had been working with  Canada geese, with trumpeter  swans and now with the cranes.  The first year that they did it,  2000, again the US Fish and  Wildlife said we're going to do  it with sandhills just to make  sure.  We don't want to risk our rare  whooping cranes until we know  this is going to work.  So they started planning and  they raised the birds out at  Patuxent in Maryland.  Got them hatched out there and  then flew them out to Necedah,  trained them to follow the  ultralight there and then lead  themselves.  In the meantime, there were some  biologists at Patuxent who were  trying to find a less expensive  and less dangerous way to do  this.  The migrations out west had  actually been kind of risky for  the pilots because there had  been some close calls with  mountain sides and weather and  so on. 

 What they did was they found an  old ambulance, called it the  crane mobile.  They refurbished it.  Put flags all over it that the  birds could follow and the  people on the crane mobile,  because sandhills are gray with  red skull caps they wore gray  jackets and red baseball caps.  And they trained these birds to  follow the ambulance, and then  they took them out to New Mexico  and they took them on a 200-mile  migration route down the length  of New Mexico and penned them up  during the winter.  The idea was that in the spring  they would release them, they  would fly back to the starting  point and they could save the  trouble with all the airplanes.  The trip down was kind of  interesting.  The birds are flying low to the  ground to keep in sight of the  ambulance.  Every time the ambulance went  through woods the birds got  lost.  They had some very interesting  encounters with pedestrians,  bicyclists, oncoming cars,  things like that.  And it is was touch and go but  they did all, all but one made  it down, one hit a power line  and died but all the rest made  it down. 

 They released them the following  spring and the birds scattered.  Two of them, or a bunch of them  ended up in a school yard which  apparently, because of its  fence, looked like their winter  pen.  Two of them ended up in the  exercise yard of the local state  prison because it looked like  their pen.  (laughter)  They were bailed out  and immediately disappeared.  Most of the birds ended up on  the local golf course following  anybody who was wearing a red  baseball cap.  (laughter)  For Operation  Migration for the eastern route  they used a much tighter  protocol in raising the birds,  complete isolation from humans.  This person's wearing what looks  like a burqa, it's a crane suit  that was developed at Baraboo  the at International Crane  Foundation.  This is hand puppet that can  actually, has a trigger in it so  the beak actually works.  They have one version that will  actually dispense mealworms to  teach the crane to forage.  No human speech, no human voice,  no human hands are to be seen by  the crane. 

 They're very careful about this.  This person has a tape recorder  that's got recorded brood calls  and alarm calls.  So they're teaching the cranes  to recognize the calls that  their parents would typically  make.  These are young whoopers.  Until they're about six or eight  months old they've got this  cinnamon colored markings and  then gradually as they get to be  about nine months old they get  the pure white with the black  wing tips.  At Necedah they had a large pen  that was halfway into the marsh  so the birds had a fairly  natural habitat within this  large pen that was about an acre  and a half.  And then right next to the pen  was a runway, a grass runway  where they would be trained.  Started by training them with  the ultralight with no wing on  it.  Just taxiing back and forth.  Then as the birds got stronger  they would lift off and the  birds would follow them into the  air. 

 The initial flights were just a  short circuit around what we  call the landing pattern which  is kind of a rectangle with the  landing strip on one side.  And it brought, on the back side  of the circuit, it brought them  over the pen.  And the birds were always  tempted to land and drop out of  formation and they had to figure  out some way to stop them from  doing that.  Thus was born the swamp monster.  (laughter)  This young lady would  hide in the grass by the pen, if  the birds came down it was roar  and make noise and wave her arms  and it worked fine to discourage  the birds.  On October 28, I'm sorry, in  October 2000, 13 sandhills left  Necedah.  There were three ultralights,  one to lead the birds, one to  lead birds that dropped out of  formation, pick them up and try  to steer them back to formation  and a third to fly top cover and  try to keep track of everything.  One bird dropped out along the  way and had to be trailered most  of the way down.  One bird hit a power line and  was killed.  Power lines are a major problem  for sandhills for cranes of all  kinds. 

 The route from Necedah to  Chassahowitzka is just about  1200 miles and 11 birds made it  down.  Took them about 45 days, flying  once every morning.  They would get up early in the  morning before the air got  trashy, they'd fly for an hour  or two and then during the day  the birds would be out loose,  watched by costumed handlers and  then at night they'd keep them  penned to keep them away from  the local raccoons and other  riffraff.  The biggest obstacle was  weather.  They were down for weather and  high winds and turbulence about  half the time.  And, I'm sorry, I said 45 days  it actually took, well that is  45 days.  It took about six weeks to get  down there.  A wild crane would make the same  trip in about two to three  weeks.  The next spring, they were  penned here at Chassahowitzka.  This is a salt marsh just behind  them. 

 Let out during the day to forage  and then brought back into the  pen at night.  The plan was to, when they got  ready to migrate back in the  spring, to follow them, to track  them using small planes, follow  them all the way back and see  where they went.  But they caught everybody with  their pants down, they left in  February.  Nobody was ready to track them.  They left early.  And disappeared for 66 days.  Wasn't feasible to try to find  them in a migration corridor was  that 1200 miles long by 200  miles wide so they just had to  wait.  In late April all 11 birds  landed together on the runway at  Necedah.  When humans approached they flew  away.  So they were acting like wild  birds. 

 They had found their way back as  a group.  It had worked.  So July 2001 began working with  whooping crane chicks at  Necedah.  It took 48 days to lead 12  chicks down.  23 of those days spent on the  ground.  And the following spring they  migrated back to Wisconsin.  And each year since 2001,  Operation Migration has led a  group of chicks down to Florida  and then they have come back on  their own with the wild flock.  Generally, the older birds, the  younger birds, like last year's  class, their first migration  back north they'll come back as  a group but after that cranes  tend to migrate either singly or  in groups of, at most, three  birds.  So they tend, when they come  back as older birds, they tend  to kind of wander around.  Some of them end up in Michigan. 

 A couple of them ended up in New  York.  But they do come back north and  they do find good --.  In 2007 the first chick was born  from birds that had been led  down by Operation Migration.  So the wild flock that's been  created at Necedah is now  beginning to reproduce.  They're also doing, up in  Necedah, to supplement this  program they're doing what's  called direct Autumn release  where they raise chicks at  Patuxent, bring them out to  Necedah and release them into  the wild flock at Necedah.  The birds then follow the  veteran wild birds down to  Florida.  Last year's, the last two years  the migrations have taken three  months or more because of  weather that just had been  weathered down most of the time.  They moved, this year they moved  the migration route a little bit  west to get away from the  Piedmont figuring they could get  some better weather out on the  flats.  Didn't help much.  It still took them three months  to get down there. 

 But they're also splitting the  flock this year.  Half the flock, they all went to  Chassahowitzka initially but now  half the flock is going to go to  St. Marks  National Wildlife Refuge  which is up on the crook of the  panhandle in Florida.  One of the reasons for that, in  2007 the 18 birds, one of the  biggest classes, the 18 birds  that they led down arrived at  Chassahowitzka, were penned over  the winter and in February were  hit by a storm that killed 17 of  the 18 birds.  They don't know whether the  birds were drowned by a storm  surge or whether the pen was hit  by lightening but 17 of the  birds were killed.  It set the program back a year  but it didn't disprove the  concept.  It didn't make anybody say we  shouldn't be doing this.  They've split the flocks now so  that they're are two different  sites so that should help  protect them against another  disaster.  The program is going well.  It is continuing.  It's envisioned as a 10 year  program. 

 So they will continue to fly the  ultralights hopefully through  about 2011 or 2012.  The direct Autumn releases, they  are successful but they're much  smaller groups and there's a  higher mortality rate because  when you lead the birds down,  obviously they're supervised all  the way.  When you just release them into  the flock then they have to  pretty much fend for themselves.  I think last year they released  six birds and only four of them  survived to reach  Chassahowitzka.  But it is working.  They're now contemplating a  second flock that will go from  somewhere probably in Minnesota  down to Louisiana.  So that there will eventually be  three flocks.  So 1941 there were 14 birds in  the wild.  And a handful in zoos.  Today, as of January 2009, the  Florida/Wisconsin migratory  flock is 87 birds, that includes  the 14 that flew down last fall  behind the ultralight. 

 Kissimmee, that's the  non-migratory flock that was  established back in the '70s by  raising the birds at Patuxent,  releasing them in Florida, and  then just not, again if you  don't encourage them, if you  don't lead them on migration  they won't migrate, they'll just  stay put.  So 30 birds in that.  They're not adding any more  birds to that population but  they're studying them and  working with them and that  population is reproducing.  A big problem with bobcats  there.  Bobcats apparently consider  whooping cranes to be great  dinner.  Aransas/Wood Buffalo flock,  that's the original wild flock,  is now 270 birds.  The last year that included  about, I think there's about 40  youngsters.  So the total wild population is  387.  Captivity includes Patuxent,  International Crane Foundation  and Calgary Zoo which are the  three captive breeding programs  and then other zoos for a total  of 156.  543 birds. 

 That is a terribly small  population for a world  population.  Very much at risk.  It's going to be years and years  before these birds are ever off  the endangered list, if they are  ever off the list.  But compared to 14 birds 60  years ago it's a big step  forward.  Some of my favorite websites for  following the birds, Saving  Cranes is the International  Crane Foundation.  Operation Migration is again the  group that operates the  ultralights.  And the Whooping Crane Eastern  Partnership is a public/private  coalition of all kinds of state  agencies and federal agencies  and private concerns that came  together to oversee the whole  project.  Credit where credit is due.  I should tell you I was never  directly involved in any of  these projects.  I was simply hired to document  them. 

 I have never actually seen a  whooping crane in the air.  I've seen them on the ground up  in Necedah, but I have yet to  see one in flight.  My wife has seen a half dozen of  them, but I haven't seen any.  And this is my shameless  commercial pitch.  If you're interested, the book  is for sale here.  I will stay around to sign  books, answer questions,  whatever, for as long as you  want me to.  So if you have any questions,  ask away.  Thank you, very much.  (applause)