During a recent campaign by the Alliance for Zero Extinction to name the “7 Wonders of Endangered Species,” Poyang Lake, China, winter home to nearly all of the world’s Critically Endangered Siberian Cranes, made the cut!
Our friendship began in the spring of 1977 when Ted, then US Ambassador to Afghanistan, helped Ron Sauey, co-founder with George of the International Crane Foundation, find the stopping point in Afghanistan of a flock of Siberian Cranes migrating from northern India to northern Siberia. The friendship has been renewed many times since 1977, most recently when George discovered a Siberian Crane and told Ted where to find it at the Gun Gaalut Reserve east of Ulaanbaater in June, 2012. We met at our ger (yurt) camp on the first night of George’s trip to eastern Mongolia and the last night of a two-week trip Ted was taking in the same area where he had not yet found any Siberian Cranes.
At the North American Crane Workshop in 2008, ICF had the pleasure to host our long-term colleague, Inga Bysykatova from the Institute of Biological Problems of the Cryolithozone (IBPC) in Yakutia, Russia. Inga had been studying Sandhill Cranes that migrated from Texas, across Alaska, to breed in the tundra in far eastern Russia.
On Wednesday, 5 September 2012, Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, participated in the “Flight of Hope” Project on the reintroduction of the endangered Siberian Crane in West Asia. The flight has drawn much needed worldwide attention to the conservation of this species.
In mid-June we enjoyed another magical night at the International Crane Foundation. An Evening with the Cranes drew friends from across the country to share wine, food, and song from the crane regions of the world, under a beautiful summer sky.