- 15 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:16Oh, there they are. They're right there.
00:17Oh, my gosh.
00:22Do you think the baby's with them then?
00:24Oh, yeah.
00:26There is.
00:28Look at the baby.
00:30Oh, this is absolutely wonderful.
00:36Oh, he is so cute. I mean, his legs are so long for him, that baby.
00:44Dad got something. See, he's passing it to the chick.
00:47Oh, there you go.
00:48The chick took the food.
00:51They just lavish care on their young.
00:53Oh, that's so nice.
00:54They're so protective.
00:56That is so neat. I'm so glad you brought me here.
01:00Yeah.
01:00We really lucked out.
01:01We did.
01:02It's always fun to share the cranes with others.
01:07Watching this family of whooping cranes just going about their day, it's hard to believe they were nearly extinct.
01:13But in the 1940s, there were less than 20 left.
01:19Bringing a species back from the brink of extinction is hard.
01:23But it's not impossible.
01:25It takes time.
01:26Perseverance.
01:27And the right dance partner.
01:34George Archibald has been working to save cranes for over 50 years.
01:38This story actually has a personal connection for me.
01:41As my dad filmed with George for the nature of things 45 years ago.
01:45Here at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, a Canadian, George Archibald, has gathered together a wide array of
01:54endangered species of cranes.
01:56He hopes that by studying and breeding them in captivity, they'll be able to help them survive in the wild.
02:04Ethically, we should protect the cranes because we as a species have been responsible for their demise in the past
02:11150 years.
02:13I'm in Wisconsin to see for myself the impact of George's work since my dad visited.
02:19They have a nest right there.
02:20Oh, okay.
02:21And she wants him to come over to the nest.
02:23So she's putting her beak up and pointing towards the nest.
02:27Huh.
02:27And giving this low call.
02:30Can you hear it?
02:32Yeah.
02:35And now she's doing a ruffle display.
02:38Huh.
02:39And he's getting closer.
02:41So that's communication.
02:42Her kind of plucking at her feathers is actual communication.
02:45Yeah.
02:47Ritualized preening.
02:51George grew up in rural Nova Scotia.
02:55When he learned whooping cranes were endangered, he wanted to save them.
03:00So he studied to become an ornithologist and co-founded the International Crane Foundation.
03:07George has dedicated his life to saving the world's 15 species of cranes, and it's required a lot of thinking
03:14outside the box.
03:19In the early days, when people were concerned about whooping cranes, some mistakes were made in their management.
03:27Tex was a whooping cranes.
03:30Tex was a whooping crane that was hatched at the San Antonio Zoo in 1966.
03:35The director of the zoo took this little bird into his home, and it became hopelessly imprinted on humans.
03:45Well, for 10 years, they tried pairing Tex to a male crane.
03:49She had absolutely no interest in cranes, but when male zookeepers walked by, she would start dancing.
04:00And does that really mean that she thought she was a human?
04:05I don't know what she thought, but I know it turned her on.
04:09It was humans, not cranes.
04:26So I proposed that they would send Tex to our center in Wisconsin.
04:35When a whooping crane dance, they bow and they leap and they throw sticks in the air.
04:39So I would do the same thing.
04:44Whooping cranes mate for life, and Tex only had eyes for George.
04:49Their relationship won the hearts of people across North America and landed George on The Tonight Show.
05:04This has to do with a six-year-old crane, right?
05:09Fifteen.
05:09Fifteen.
05:10Fifteen.
05:10Right.
05:11And female.
05:12Right.
05:12And you were trying to get her to reproduce, and we're not having any luck.
05:19We worked with Tex from 1976 until 1982, and we imported semen to do the artificial insemination.
05:34Finally, in 1982, the egg hatched.
05:38We called the chick Gee Whiz, and he produced 26 offspring, and from them about 130 cranes were produced.
05:50You were doing this dance for years and hoping for a fertile egg, and then you got a fertile egg.
05:55Right.
05:55But you were the first to say, we can't have imprinting on humans again.
06:00Yeah.
06:00And why is that so important?
06:03Because the bird is behaviorally neutered, and you want them to be like this pair interacting and being natural.
06:13And the last thing in the world you want is them to be fixated on humans.
06:28To avoid another situation like Tex, scientists had to come up with innovative ways to prevent imprinting.
06:37Marianne Wellington supervises the Crane Foundation's costume-rearing program.
06:42Cranes will imprint on their keepers, and so we try to do everything that we can to have a bird
06:48know that it's a bird,
06:49and not a human being in a funny costume.
06:55Marianne wears a white robe to obscure her human features.
07:00As a Crane mom, she plays a recording of a contact call that Crane parents make for their chicks in
07:06the wild.
07:10A Crane puppet completes the costume.
07:18The team are costume-rearing eight chicks this year, and they're all named after Muppets.
07:24This is Fizzgig.
07:28Fizzgig is our youngest, and he's the smallest.
07:32Actually, I had a lot of concerns about him because he's had some issues with not wanting to eat.
07:40So I brought him out in the yard to try to get him interested in the pellets, which he did
07:44great.
07:45And then I kind of treated him a little extra by giving him some shrimp and some grapes and a
07:52few other treats to get him to move around and forage.
08:06Out and exercise, that's our daily routine.
08:13Wearing the costume is pretty special.
08:16Just being able to be in their world.
08:28In addition to costume-rearing, the Crane Foundation also has Whooping Crane parents raise chicks when possible.
08:36There's one parent-reared chick this year, named Beaker.
08:45And this is Beaker, our parent-reared chick.
08:50We can get a close-up of his little fuzzy butt.
08:55This camera system allows us to monitor his growth, to keep track of if the parents are feeding him well,
09:02without being very hands-on with the birds, which is sort of counterproductive to what we want.
09:10So she's teaching him to probe and forage in the pond right now.
09:13She's seeing something down there.
09:19Nice worm.
09:21We want them to be raised by birds and therefore develop and learn all of those correct behaviors that will
09:28help him survive in the wild.
09:30While Beaker and Fisgig grow up in captivity, a new generation of wild whooping crane chicks face survival head-on
09:38as they find their footing in the Northwest Territories.
09:44Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada's largest national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
09:53Its mix of boreal forest, wetlands and salt plains make it ideal habitat for many different species, including whooping cranes.
10:05Whooping cranes are extremely territorial and each pair needs a thousand acres during nesting season,
10:11making this one of the only places in the world they can nest and raise their young.
10:17Thanks to decades of conservation work, there are now over 500 birds in the wild flock.
10:25But this has been one of the hottest and driest summers on record and forest fires are ripping through the
10:31park.
10:33While firefighters work around the clock, a team with Parks Canada prepares to check the nesting grounds.
10:38Yeah, all where the stars are was where we found nests in May.
10:43So we'll go to each of those locations and just circle around and then try to find the families.
10:50The drought conditions are this year, so some of those nests might not be available on dry land.
10:56Parks Canada works with Indigenous partners to survey the whooping cranes' nesting grounds.
11:01First in May to count the number of nests, and again in late July to count the number of chicks
11:06that survived the summer.
11:09Alright, here we go guys.
11:14As soon as we got up in here, we could just tell by looking at the ground, things were so
11:18dry.
11:19A lot of the whooping crane areas shrunk already just in one year.
11:24Drought poses a challenge for the cranes because predators can more easily access the nests.
11:31It also, there's food sources within the wetlands, like invertebrates, frogs, the cranes would be eating that would no longer
11:39be available to them.
11:40Two o'clock, coming up on three o'clock.
11:44GPS?
11:45Yes?
11:45Five, nine, nine, one.
11:48Let's just make sure that there's just one chick and not two.
11:53Hungry for twins?
11:54I am hungry for twins.
11:56Would be nice.
12:01Last year, Parks Canada counted 96 nests and 61 chicks.
12:07This year, they found 95 nests, but only 40 chicks.
12:12Looking out on like three o'clock, you can see like the wall of smoke.
12:17Oh yeah.
12:18Well that's us for fuel, so that we have a little bit to play with in the smoke.
12:24Safety concerns forced the crew to end the survey early.
12:38You see, look, look at this.
12:40Look at this.
12:41This looks like fall.
12:44Everything is just so brittle and dry.
12:47And it's only July.
12:49It's dry as anything?
12:50This will all go up like gas at one spark if it went in there.
12:55We've arrived at the mighty salt flats.
12:58Oh.
12:59Our old great-grandfather used to haul salt out of here long before we were born.
13:04I wonder what it looked like back then.
13:06I'll be a lot better than this.
13:11Yeah, so low water doesn't only impact the whooping cranes, it impacts all types of birds.
13:15They're all dependent on water too.
13:20Because in the water there's all kind of bugs and all the little crustaceans and little things they eat.
13:24So when that dries up, everything dries up.
13:27It all works together and when something like this dries up, it throws everything off.
13:33Yeah, you're living everything.
13:34You got that right, my boy.
13:37Green tracks, it looks like.
13:48Holy man, look at the smoke rolling in here now.
13:53This fire can travel, man.
14:00The town of Fort Smith is on evacuation alert.
14:03And fires are moving closer to the whooping cranes territory.
14:08But a team with the Canadian Wildlife Service still has work to do.
14:14They're here to put satellite tags on whooping crane chicks so they can track them during their migration.
14:30The team uses GPS data from the Parks Canada survey to find crane families with chicks.
14:37Once they're on the ground, they give themselves 12 minutes to get the chick in hand.
14:42Or they call it off so they don't cause too much stress.
14:49So the object of the exercise is to keep the birds between me and the people.
14:55And I'm happy because if people walk through the helicopter, they'll walk through the birds.
15:00You got all orange down.
15:01Okay, it's in those trees right there, John.
15:05Bell, our area, yeah.
15:08It should be between you.
15:13To the left, it's in the dry spot.
15:14On your side.
15:18See him?
15:21Coming out, coming out.
15:23Coming to you, coming to you.
15:25Okay, you got us surrounded.
15:26Yeah.
15:28Very nice.
15:30We got him.
15:31Good capture, folks.
15:34I'll give you a transmitter number.
15:38230-757.
15:39Come on, I'll give you that.
15:41So same thing.
15:42If you can just come with a thumb, you can just stay here.
15:45That's four kilos on the dot.
15:47This feels weird.
15:49It just takes a second.
15:54You know when you're clear?
15:55Clear.
15:57We got blood.
15:58We've gotten feathers.
16:00Got swabs.
16:01Got measurements.
16:03Gotta wait.
16:04I would put GBC, which is good body condition.
16:09And then NAF, which is no abnormal findings.
16:15All right, girlfriend.
16:19The team numbers the birds they tag with a letter
16:22to represent the year.
16:25This is 1K.
16:37Bye, little guy.
16:39Bye, little guy.
16:43So tonight I did the blood from 1K,
16:46which we got a very nice big sample on.
16:51We've got a centrifuge that will separate out blood cells
16:54from serum or plasma.
16:56So the blood cell mass allows us to do genetics,
16:59it allows us to look at heavy metals.
17:03Serum, you can test for diseases,
17:06you can test for a lot of physiological measures.
17:09And so all of those samples can give us lots of information
17:12about what's happening with the population.
17:15Seeing whooping cranes in the wild, it's a privilege.
17:18It's just amazing.
17:19And they're such beautiful birds.
17:23But they also represent a whole ecosystem
17:25that supports so many other species.
17:28And so by working to conserve one,
17:33we're working for that whole intact ecosystem.
17:37Sandy and the team tag 12 chicks in total.
17:40You're free.
17:42But they won't be able to fly for another few weeks.
17:45And the fires are closing in.
17:48The military has arrived in Yellowknife
17:51as the NWT remains gripped by multiple wildfire crises.
17:55A wildfire south of Fort Smith is only about four kilometers away.
18:00Thousands have been forced to flee their homes in the Northwest Territories
18:03where raging wildfires continue to burn.
18:07Currently evacuating, driving south out of the river.
18:10As for when people can return home, nobody has an answer just yet.
18:19Over 3,000 kilometers away in Wisconsin,
18:23beaker's fully fledged and ready to be released.
18:30Beaker will be released here in south-central Wisconsin.
18:35Hey guys, let's go inside.
18:38We will find an adult pair of whooping cranes out in the wild.
18:43And we'll release beaker near those birds.
18:49And just chill for a little bit, girl.
18:52And then those wild whooping cranes will actually teach a migration route south,
18:56which our residential whooping cranes cannot teach.
19:00When beaker's released, she'll join the eastern migratory flock.
19:05This is a different flock than the wild flock that 1K is part of.
19:09The wild flock migrates over 4,000 kilometers from Wood Buffalo National Park
19:15to the Gulf Coast of Texas.
19:17The eastern migratory flock was created as a backup for the wild flock
19:21in case anything happens to them.
19:23They're supposed to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida,
19:26but migration isn't an innate behavior in whooping cranes.
19:30So humans, dressed as cranes, had to teach them the route.
19:39Operation Migration was founded back in the 1990s
19:44when Bill Lishman was flying with Canada geese behind his ultralight aircraft.
19:48The Crane Foundation found out about this group of people that were flying with geese,
19:53and so we asked them if they would try cranes.
19:57And from 2002 to 2015, every year Operation Migration
20:02flew with a flock of whooping cranes.
20:07And we'll be forever grateful for the contribution
20:10to the return of the whooping cranes to eastern North America.
20:31When it comes time for a release, we are taking them from their parents,
20:35and then just putting them near other adult cranes in the wild,
20:40and hoping that the adults will tolerate them.
20:50So it's just basically going from your parent out into the wild without having any experience.
20:58There she goes. There she goes.
21:21Fizgig and the other costume-wear chicks are getting ready to be released too,
21:25but they still need a bit more hand-holding before joining the eastern migratory flock.
21:30Mid-August we start building a facility in Refuge,
21:34and then we take the chicks and we start working out in the field.
21:39So we have a pen that we put the birds in at night for protection,
21:43and then during the day we'll bring them out and we'll go roaming around in the wetlands.
21:55There's a couple places that we hope that we can start training them to fly to us in the morning.
22:02Where they fly over for long periods of time and get up high above the trees,
22:07that helps them with their geospatial location, and this is where they would come back to.
22:11We're hoping that they'll get familiar with this area and this is home.
22:29This morning I found dandelions and a dandelion root.
22:33That's one of the things that we forage.
22:37Fizgig was right there digging with me.
22:39If you watch parents and their offspring, lots of times they'll be digging in the same hole.
22:48Fizgig was the youngest and I had a lot of concerns about him
22:51because the younger birds get to the food last, that kind of thing.
22:57Since then, he's gained weight, his breast muscles are stronger, he's caught up and he's doing well.
23:06He's actually one of the ones that wants to fly right away.
23:11I truly enjoy when they fledge and I get them flying.
23:22It freaks you out when they first fly away.
23:33The fact that they want to come back, that's kind of a good thing and a bad thing.
23:41A bird that has gotten too clingy, too used to the costume, that's not good.
23:48Hopefully Fizgig isn't in that category.
24:00Come mid to late October, we start sneaking away and we watch them from a blind.
24:08Eventually they tell me that they're ready to go.
24:13Then we close up the facilities, the costume doesn't come back and they're on their own.
24:23That's all good as long as they've learned enough about catching frogs and snakes and other stuff.
24:28If they want to do it before I'm ready, they can cut the cord and I don't have to.
24:32That's good.
25:00That's good.
25:01It's been two weeks since Beaker's release and the Crane Foundation is keeping tabs on her.
25:16Since we've released Beaker, she's been making really smart decisions out in the wild.
25:22She very quickly bonded with her new family.
25:29She's staying very close to them as she's moving around.
25:33When they fly to a new pool, she flies with them.
25:38And then she's spending a lot of time foraging.
25:40We've seen her eating a lot of good food items for her, things like fish, frogs, roots, tubers,
25:45really the things we want to see cranes eating.
25:47They're going to give them all of that energy and strength for them to head out on their migration.
25:57Nine of the 12 chicks tagged in Wood Buffalo National Park made it out after the fires.
26:02And 1K is with them.
26:06Whooping cranes are territorial during nesting season, but they flock during migration.
26:11They stop near Saskatoon to refuel before flying across the Great Plains all the way to Texas.
26:19This is one of the most dangerous parts of their journey.
26:22And every year there are more obstacles along their way.
26:29Hi.
26:30Hi, how are you?
26:31I'm good. How are you doing?
26:32Good.
26:33I'm in Texas to see where whooping cranes spend the winter.
26:36Ready to find some cranes?
26:39I'm ready.
26:41The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge is over 4,000 kilometers south of Wood Buffalo National Park.
26:49It's here that the few remaining whooping cranes were counted in the 1940s.
26:55Despite the dangers of migration, 1K and seven of the other chicks tagged up north have made it here.
27:02I have a map of their last known whereabouts.
27:05What do you think, Kevin? Is there a good chance?
27:07This late in the day, I'm hopeful that they'll be out on that shoreline eating clams again.
27:15Captain Kevin Sims is going to help me try and find 1K.
27:21I see a bunch of little white dots down there, and two of them are bigger than the rest.
27:27I think they're white ibis.
27:28Do white ibis have the black tips on their wings too?
27:31They do.
27:32Oh, confusing.
27:35White birds that migrate long distance have black wing tips.
27:39The black pigment makes their feathers more durable for long distance flight.
27:45Huh.
27:46I mean, we are right where most of the data points are, right?
27:51Their roost is going to be very close to this.
27:54Oh, there they are.
27:56Well, there's whooping crane.
27:59I see two adults. The colt could be with them.
28:02Okay, so over, like, inland a little bit.
28:06In the grass. Yeah.
28:07You can just see their necks and their heads.
28:09Oh, yeah.
28:10So those are adults, but you're saying there might be a juvenile with them?
28:14That colt would blend in.
28:16If he's here and if he's down low feeding, we wouldn't see him.
28:20Oh, my gosh.
28:23Somebody just came into frame.
28:25Are you seeing this?
28:27I see it.
28:28I'd like to see some color to know it's the colt.
28:31The colt will have cinnamon, earth tone colors, and none of these do.
28:36Darn. So these cranes would be too old to be 1K. Is that right?
28:40These cranes are more than a year old.
28:43Why do you think they suddenly deviated and went to a completely different area?
28:48The only reason I know that they move is food or a predator, a bobcat or a coyote came into
28:55their area.
28:58We wait until sunset, but 1K and his family don't return.
29:04I'm ready when you are.
29:05All right, let's go.
29:09As much as I was hoping to find him, I realized how incredibly special it is to see whooping cranes
29:14on this landscape at all.
29:30Every winter, the town of Port Aransas has a festival to celebrate the return of whooping cranes.
29:36How are you doing?
29:37People come from all over for a chance to see them in person.
29:40Do you see some cranes?
29:41Yes, going to see lots of them.
29:42Right on.
29:44I'm hoping to see more too.
29:46And I've got the perfect guide.
29:48Hi, George!
29:49Hi!
29:51Welcome to Texas.
29:52Nice to see you again.
29:54Do you think we'll see some cranes?
29:56Hell yeah.
30:06You can't believe how big some of these ships are.
30:10Wow!
30:11It dwarfs the whole landscape.
30:17This is the Intercoastal Canal, and every day there are huge barges going up here filled with toxic chemicals.
30:23And they make a great wake, and we were losing feet of marshland habitat every year from erosion.
30:31But the greatest risk is a spill, an accident on this Intercoastal Canal.
30:38It's kind of this amazing thing where you have this natural richness and all these animals trying to survive,
30:45and then you have all this industry literally cutting right through its habitat.
30:49Right through it.
30:49And they are trying to coexist, but it's hard.
30:54Right there.
30:56See them?
30:56Oh, yeah!
30:58Yeah!
30:58There are three of them, too.
31:00Maybe that's a family.
31:01There's the cinnamon color.
31:03Yeah!
31:04There's a family right there.
31:05This would be their 500 acres.
31:08See how many condos you could put there?
31:12You saw them on the way up.
31:13I did! I did!
31:15No, you're not kidding.
31:16It's scary.
31:17Yeah.
31:18I mean, habitat is at a premium, and all these people are trying to develop out.
31:23The cranes have nowhere left to go.
31:25That's why we're working for every square inch of land we can get for the birds.
31:39The saltwater marshes along the coast are vital whooping crane habitat, but they also use freshwater wetlands.
31:46So what other things do cranes eat?
31:49Frogs, fish, snakes, they eat pretty much anything that gets in front of them.
31:54They take what they can find, and they seem to be pretty good about finding it in a lot of
31:58different types of environments.
32:00It's not very deep where we're standing, but it's a really good depth for cranes.
32:04I wish I had a net or something, and my instinct is to just scoop around.
32:07Well, we brought this in.
32:09Oh, she's getting the technique down there.
32:17And if you want to put them in here, see what they caught.
32:21Nothing big, I don't think.
32:25These big guys are the dragonfly larvae.
32:28Mm-hmm.
32:29They've got these crazy jaws.
32:31What are these?
32:32That's a damselfly larvae.
32:34Oh, okay.
32:34So we're also looking for those guys.
32:36So also an indicator of a healthy wetland.
32:39The chicks eat a lot of dragonfly larvae up in Wood Buffalo when they hatch.
32:44It's like a whole little ecosystem in here.
32:45Yeah, it's all just right under our feet.
32:52While I head home to Canada, Carter and his team continue their fieldwork.
33:08In addition to studying crane habitat, the Crane Foundation is studying crane behaviour.
33:15Carter and Maddie will take note of what this crane family is doing every minute for 40 minutes.
33:21All right, two foraging, one alert, one loafing.
33:28One more clam from mom or dad.
33:32Seems like the colt definitely knows which parent's going to feed it.
33:35It's right behind, I guess, and mom.
33:40One more clam.
33:43The colt's getting a pretty good breakfast.
33:45Yeah.
33:46They look for colour bands on the birds to help identify them.
33:49And Carter's keeping an eye out for our elusive 1K.
33:53All right.
33:54The bottom band, I think, is yellow.
33:56Okay.
33:58And we are right here on this point.
34:01The chick is banded.
34:02It has a transmitter.
34:02It's in the same area that 1K has been hanging out.
34:06So I'm guessing that's our bird.
34:14Are you able to get up any closer, you think?
34:17I'm sure we can get on that shoreline.
34:21We should be able to put it right up there.
34:23I don't think they'll be disturbed.
34:36Let me take a look.
34:38Yeah.
34:40Yeah.
34:42Yeah.
34:42So yeah, pretty clear blue-gray-yellow.
34:47So that is 1K.
34:55He's hunting on his own now.
34:58Doesn't have a lot more time with mom and dad.
35:01Let's figure it out.
35:04In just a few weeks, 1K and his parents will begin the long journey north,
35:09back to Wood Buffalo National Park.
35:12But after last year's fires, they might find things very different than they left them.
35:33Well, the fire that come through here was big.
35:36It was moving very quickly.
35:40A lot of the smaller animals in that parish.
35:43The rabbits were coming to the road and there was so much heat ahead of the fire.
35:48As soon as these rabbits would take two jumps on that pavement, it was so hot,
35:51they'd turn around and they'd run right back towards the fire.
35:56After the fire went through, we've seen buffaloes with the hair all singed on the back end.
36:01We've seen bears walking real gingerly.
36:04It must have burnt their feet.
36:07I don't think there's any real way of taking an inventory of the amount of animals that died in the
36:12fire.
36:19I know what this place looked like before.
36:21It was beautiful.
36:23Look around me now, it's just burnt trees, burnt rocks, everything burnt.
36:27Total devastation.
36:34But on the flip side, I can see all the meadows are greening up
36:38and you can see a few cranes, a few ducks, a few geese in there.
36:42So things will come back and regenerate slowly.
36:46I'm surprised at the severity of the fire, how a lot of these plants are coming back so quickly.
36:54Little pauper tree looks like, and this is going to be little rose bushes.
37:09Those are sandhill cranes, I still could see them sitting out there.
37:13Two of them.
37:14Last year we've seen whooping cranes there, same place.
37:19Whooping cranes nest in wetland areas and most of their nesting grounds were spared by the fire.
37:25But it's not all good news.
37:27This year's fledgling survey only found 30 chicks, which is less than half the year before the fires, when 61
37:35chicks were counted.
37:39Cranes evolved with forest fires on the landscape, but climate change is making droughts and wildfires more frequent and more
37:47severe.
37:51Animals can adapt to just about anything, but they can't adapt to chaos.
38:03Every little single thing that happens in the ecosystem has its effects on animals, whether you think it's important or
38:10not it is.
38:12You know, everything's related, you know.
38:17Everything's related.
38:221K and his parents made the long journey back from Texas.
38:27But one-year-old chicks aren't welcome on their parents' nests, as adults are hoping to raise new chicks.
38:36So last year's chicks are on their own.
38:40They'll spend the next few years hanging out with other juveniles until they're old enough to pair off and begin
38:46the cycle again.
38:51After spending the winter in Indiana, Fizz Gig and four of the other costume-reared birds have returned to Wisconsin.
38:59Beaker also made the return migration with her adoptive parents.
39:03But sadly, her transmitter stopped moving this summer.
39:07The tracking team at the Crane Foundation believed she collided with a power line and died.
39:14The saddest feeling is when you have to pick up a bird that doesn't survive in the wild.
39:18It really is heart-wrenching when they die.
39:24And so, again, that keeps you in check of trying to keep everything going well.
39:30Reality is reality. Nature is nature.
39:45Marianne and her team are costume-rearing seven more chicks for release in the fall.
39:49And two more chicks are being parent-reared.
39:53They're all named after moons.
40:00Having the chicks be able to grow up and reproduce and just keeping the whole population going.
40:06That's the main thing.
40:09So, there's little baby steps that we're going forward on, which is fantastic.
40:23Let's go!
40:24I've always been optimistic in always seeing the next thing to do and doing it.
40:31My mother used to say, the only way to get something done is to do it.
40:36And I do it with optimism.
40:41I saw the Crane Foundation right from the beginning as a fertile egg that had to be incubated with the
40:48proper conditions, and at some point it's going to hatch.
40:52And I feel that way about all of our projects, that they're very difficult, but through faith and hard work,
41:01eventually you have a hatch.
41:04Right.
41:05But in the meantime, you've got to be patient.
41:08Now, let me see if I can get them to come over.
41:11Come on.
41:14Come on.
41:15Wow, look at that.
41:18Well, she's beautiful.
41:20In the wild, if they're raising the chick...
41:22Oh, here they're going to dance. Come on.
41:25Why would they be dancing right now?
41:27Oh, they're happy.
41:34It's been moving for me to learn about this incredible recovery story that my dad started following before I was
41:41born.
41:43All right, so let's see if we can get Dad on the Zoom now.
41:48Hi, Dad.
41:49Hi.
41:50I'm here in Wisconsin with George.
41:52Hi, David.
41:53Hi, George. It's been a long time.
41:5543 years.
41:57Things have changed a lot.
41:59Yeah, George had hair back then.
42:01Yeah.
42:04So here we are.
42:06Can you see Dad?
42:08I want to show you one of the cranes.
42:09So I'm going to flip this around and see if you can see them.
42:12There's a pair right here.
42:14Can you see them?
42:15Yes, I do.
42:15The white ones.
42:17Yeah.
42:18So these would be the same kind you saw 43 years ago.
42:22Back in the 50s, there were only 15 cranes.
42:27Wow.
42:27And now there are 851?
42:29Yeah, it's still very low number, but it's better than in the teens.
42:33Yeah.
42:34But it's been a monumental effort to bring them back.
42:37I just wanted to call in and kind of bring this full circle of how far they've come with cranes.
42:42I can't congratulate you strongly enough, George, for hanging in there and expanding and creating this sanctuary.
42:54Yay.
42:54Okay.
42:54Thanks, Dad.
42:56And thanks for babysitting for me.
42:59See you later.
43:01So long.
43:03Whooping cranes are still one of the rarest birds in the world.
43:07But thanks to decades of hard work by people across North America, they're no longer on the brink of extinction.
43:17There are 14 other species of cranes, and lessons learned with whooping cranes are being used around the world to
43:25protect all these formidable birds and our shared future.
43:30Will you be here, man?
43:33What's the end of this world?
43:34Will you be here?
43:34Has he been here?
43:58Will your father have a great day?
43:58I'll never hear you later.
43:58I can't see you later.
43:59Maybe your mother's coming in here.
44:00You're in the future, my mother.
44:00Amen.
Comments