Ornithologist Paul Johnsgard, nature photographer Tom Mangelsen and International Crane Foundation Co-founder George Archibald break for a photo while birding at the Platte River in Nebraska. Photo by Linda Brown. Every March for more than four decades, I have made my way to Nebraska to experience the gathering of perhaps the planet’s largest gathering of cranes. In late March of 2020, this was my final trip of the year as the pandemic swept over this continent. I safely returned to the same area this spring to view a portion of more than a million Sandhill Cranes, and at the same time, I had my final visit with one of the planet’s great ornithologists and lover of cranes, Paul Johnsgard. Two months later, in late May, at the age of 89 and with over 100 book titles and a litany of scientific and fictional publications, Paul passed away.

One of the greatest joys of my life with cranes is friendship with others who share such passion for these special birds. My colleagues at the Institute for Biological Problems of the Cryolithozone (permafrost) – IBPC in Yakutia, Russia, Drs. Nikolai Germoganov, Inga Bysykatova and Masha Vladimirtseva have been such friends for many years.

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.

Each rectangular one-half acre of wetland vegetation surrounded by deeper water is called a “task” and represents a former section of a rice field. Prior to the Civil War the ACE Basin was a major rice production area. Today, many of these wetlands are managed for waterfowl hunting of migratory ducks and the breeding of mottled ducks, white ibis, wood storks, herons, egrets, rails, eagles, osprey and others.