Habitat Loss Threatens Cranes

Elizabeth Kilanowski watches birds from her home in Squalicum Harbor.

Paintings and drawing by Robert Bateman
North Point Press, 2003
347 pp., softbound, $16.00
ISBN 0865476578

Environmentalists speak often of habitat loss and its drastically negative effect on birds. Over the years I have mulled those two words with an incomplete understanding of their meaning. Was I to view habitat loss as a local, backyard, or county problem, or should I see it in a worldwide context?

Reading “The Birds of Heaven” by naturalist Peter Matthiessen, my understanding of habitat loss deepened. I am no longer able to view my surroundings without thinking about how birds and other wildlife are affected by my lifestyle choices.

Of the 15 species of cranes which Matthiessen writes about, 11 are endangered. These great birds travel the globe and, while our population expands to fill all spaces, are restricted more and more into isolated tracts where fluctuations of nature or human decisions can greatly affect their numbers.

My fortune was to have grown up in central Minnesota where, every summer, flocks of sandhill cranes came to nest. I do not, however, remember much vocalization from these birds as they tended their young.

But years later, while canoeing in a remote area of Ontario in September, I heard the great trumpeting of migrating cranes, their calls echoing between the high granite cliffs as they descended from the sky for their nightly roost. I had those memories with me when I began reading this book.

Like all good nature stories, this one educates. We learn the scientific names of cranes, their habits, adaptations and evolutionary history. Cranes belong to the order Gruiformes, suborder Grues, and the genus Balearica, Grus and Anthropides.

Some confusion can exist over the term crane as herons are commonly called cranes in South America (where cranes do not live), Scotland, Ireland and Australia. A few species of cranes stand over five feet tall and some can fly above 20,000 feet while migrating. The cranes humans see today are very close to those that flew 60 million years ago.

This story begins with Matthiessen flying across Alaska, the Bering Sea and to the Bolshe-Khekhstir Wildlife Reserve in Siberia southwest of the city of Khabarovsk. He attends an international conference on cranes co-hosted by the Russian Socio-Ecological Union and the International Crane Foundation, headquartered in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Attendees included representatives from South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, China, Russia and the United States.

Despite political differences, these representatives must work together to help solve problems such as habitat destruction within their borders, which cranes to not honor. Matthiessen says, “Increasingly, geopolitics must be perceived as a critical factor in crane survival.”

The attendees travel together along the great Amur River, which separates Mongolia and Russia, in search of the breeding grounds of the white-naped (Grus vipio) and the red-crowned (Grus japonensis) cranes. They visit the Khingan Nature Reserve to view adult cranes with their young.

Mattheissen’s next stop is eastern Mongolia to visit the main breeding grounds of the white-napped crane. Along the way, the small demoiselle crane (Anthropoides virgo) with long white plumes flowing from its gray-blue head is encountered. As grassland has given way to agriculture, this species has adapted to feeding in populated areas and has become vulnerable to pesticides and power lines.

We travel next with Mattheissen to India to learn about the six-foot tall Indian sarus (Grus antigone), a “holy messenger of Vishnu, the Hindu deity.” Protected from hunting, the sarus’s greatest enemy is habitat loss. And so on to Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Africa, England and finally to North America.

In North America, we find the greater sandhill crane (Grus canadensis), the “Echo Maker” to the Anishinabe, Native Americans of the woodlands to the west of the Great Lakes, and the whooping crane (Grus americana) with a population of 26 forty years ago. Today the whooping crane has “recovered” to almost 270 birds after years of effort by dedicated individuals.

In each area of the world Mattheissen visits, we meet many of these dedicated individuals from many nations, working—often with little money or government support—to save crane habitat. The interviews with these people reflect their joy, frustration and hope that their efforts will help save these birds from extinction.

As Mattheissen covers the globe in his search for cranes, he mixes the natural history of these creatures with his view of changes that have swept across the earth as our species expands to fill all niches. He laments “the American monoculture that spreads like a plastic sheet across the world, stifling the last indigenous whiffs and quirks and colors.”

The book is beautifully illustrated with drawings and paintings done by the Salt Spring Island artist, Robert Bateman. Throughout the book I found myself referring back to his color plates and black and white drawings to link species names with identifying features. Bateman worked from photographs and sketches he made while visiting the International Crane Foundation in Wisconsin.

Locally, I have watched small flocks of sandhill cranes flying over Sqaulicum Harbor in the spring and fall; others have seen cranes on land in various areas of Whatcom County and the Fraser Delta. §