Latest news with #InternationalCraneFoundation
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
South Africa's wattled cranes are no longer critically endangered: why the birds' numbers are rising
Cranes are some of the world's most majestic birds, with 15 species found globally. Four of these are found in Africa. The wattled crane in South Africa was in decline, but seems to have turned a corner. Its numbers have increased from just 188 birds in 2000 to 304 today. Crane researcher Lara Fuller explains how the population's recovery recently led to it being moved from Critically Endangered to Endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's list of threatened species. Wattled cranes are the largest crane species in Africa. They are only found on the continent and there are only about 9,600 left in Zambia, Botswana, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The tall birds (up to 180cm or six feet tall) have a wingspan of up to 2.6 metres wide and can weigh up to 8 kilograms. They're the tallest flying African bird. In the wild, the wattled cranes are estimated to live for about 30 years although older birds have been observed. These birds carry striking colours and conduct spectacular mating rituals involving bowing, dancing and jumping. They symbolise grace, devotion, beauty and longevity. Firstly, the number of breeding areas has increased. In 1999, there were only 70 breeding territories. Today, this has increased to 84 breeding areas in the wattled crane's core population in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. To count cranes, we use annual aerial surveys. We average the number of birds viewed over several years so that we are sure we get an accurate number. In 2000, there were just 188 individual birds in KwaZulu-Natal. By 2005, the South Africa population had increased to 242 individual birds. By 2024, 304 individual birds were found. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature keeps lists of how endangered all animals are globally. This helps scientists and society know when an animal is edging closer to extinction. When an animal becomes less endangered through a conservation success, this is known as downlisting. In the case of the wattled cranes, their downlisting from Critically Endangered to Endangered was achieved by the Endangered Wildlife Trust and the International Crane Foundation working with landowners where the birds live to restore their habitats. The biggest number of these birds living together in Africa is found on the southern-central floodplains (areas of flooded grasslands found in different countries across southern and central Africa). There are two smaller populations in Ethiopia and South Africa. Most wattled cranes in South Africa inhabit the foothills of the Drakensberg mountain range. This area provides a large amount of drinking water to numerous towns and settlements. Wattled cranes live in wetlands and grasslands in the area. The wetlands form between 10% and 40% of their breeding territory, and the surrounding natural grasslands make up about 20% to 80% of their nesting territory. Grasslands are crucial to the health of wetlands. They keep soil stable and prevent erosion and siltation of the wetland. These areas also provide water to people through naturally occurring springs. These are often used by rural villages, and without them, many communities would not have access to drinking water. Read more: Grasslands are also foraging areas for the family of wattled cranes as the chick becomes larger. Wattled cranes eat water lilies and other water plants, water insects, snails, and frogs found in wetlands. The birds breed in wetlands, where there is enough food available for chicks to grow one inch (2.54 cm) per week after they hatch. The chicks only start flying when they are several weeks old. Until then, wetlands act as natural moats, protecting chicks from being eaten by predators. Read more: Wetlands are often seen as muddy, damp, insect ridden and smelly places. In South Africa in the 1970s, 50% of the country's wetlands were drained and turned into commercial agricultural lands or degraded. As South Africa is also considered a water scarce country, this action had a devastating result and is partly the reason why the wattled cranes became critically endangered. When rain falls in abundance, wetlands soak up the water, slowing the flow down and reducing flooding. This saves a lot of damage to infrastructure and prevents soil erosion in natural areas. Wetlands are also a natural water purification system – they clean pollutants from the water, and deliver water that is much cleaner than it was when it soaked into the wetland. Where wattled cranes are found breeding in wetlands, it is a clear sign that the wetland is healthy and thriving. The wellbeing of people, cranes and wetlands is intricately linked. The size of the wattled crane population in KwaZulu-Natal – fewer than 400 birds – makes it incredibly vulnerable to catastrophic events, such as disease. This would put the species at risk of extinction in South Africa. Wattled cranes need more breeding sites to increase their populations. Wetlands need to be rehabilitated and restored, because the birds won't mate and breed in degraded or polluted wetlands. Environmentalists and the birds will be relying on the goodwill of landowners and everyone who uses wetlands to support this and help keep wetlands clean. We plan to deepen our work in restoring wetlands. We aim to restore wetlands in other parts of South Africa too so that wattled cranes can go back into these habitats and continue to breed. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Lara Fuller, University of KwaZulu-Natal Read more: For endangered species, the road to recovery can be winding and bumpy Bird species are disappearing at an alarming rate in Kenya – new study South Africa's Agulhas long-billed lark: adapting and surviving despite farming taking over their nesting grounds Lara Fuller works for two NPO's the Endangered Wildlife Trust and the International Crane Foundation. These orgainsations receives funds from multiple bodies.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
With bird flu circulating, is it safe to leave up bird feeders?
As highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, circulates across the nation and beyond it is causing die-offs in domestic flocks as well as wild birds. Since early 2022 the disease has killed or led to the culling of about 166 million domestic birds in the U.S., according to a March 11 report of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It's the largest, deadliest and most costly bird flu outbreak in history, according to federal officials. The toll on wild birds is harder to tally but is also significant, according to wildlife officials. In late February the H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza caused the deaths of an estimated 1,500 sandhill cranes across several counties in Indiana, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. It was the largest documented number of crane deaths due to bird flu anywhere in North America, said Anne Lacy, director of Eastern Flyway programs for the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo. With all the news of bird deaths, many people have concerns about feeding birds in their yards. Here is how bird flu affects different species and tips for safely feeding birds in your yard. Highly pathogenic avian influenza does not affect all types of birds equally, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Waterfowl such as ducks and geese as well as raptors such as bald eagles have been among those hit hardest by the disease. And domestic poultry are extremely susceptible to bird flu and spread the disease easily, leading to up to 100% mortality of affected flocks. Since the most recent outbreak of bird flu started about three years ago, the Raptor Education Center Inc. in Antigo has taken in about 3,000 sick or dying birds, mostly from central and northern Wisconsin. About 40% were songbirds of some sort. But none had symptoms of or were detected with bird flu, said Marge Gibson, REGI founder and wildlife rehabilitator. Meanwhile about a dozen bald eagles were brought to the center with bird flu; all either died from the disease or had to be euthanized. The general answer is no, according to wildlife health experts and rehabilitators. Songbirds are much less likely than waterfowl to contract variants of avian influenza and less likely to shed large amounts of virus, meaning they do not transmit the disease easily, according to Cornell. "If people have been feeding birds, you can continue, you should continue," Gibson said. "It brings benefits, including to people. As of now there is no reason to not feed birds." Gibson said people with bird feeders in their yards should continue by using best practices, including regular cleaning of feeders with a mild bleach solution and water. Rubber gloves should be worn when cleaning the feeders. And if any dead birds are seen, use rubber gloves to pick them up and bag them and properly dispose of them in the trash. In advice on its website, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says removing backyard bird feeders is not something the agency specifically recommends to prevent the spread of avian influenza. Unless, that is, you raise poultry. People who care for poultry should prevent contact between wild birds and poultry by removing sources of food, water, and shelter that attract wild birds, according to the agency. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is asking for the public's help in monitoring for bird flu this spring. If five or more sick or dead birds are observed in one area, the public is encouraged to report it by emailing to DNRWildlifeSwitchboard@ or calling (608) 267-0866. In your message, include the number of animals, the species (such as Canada goose), if they were sick or dead, the specific location where you saw them, including name of county, as well as your contact information. More: What to know about bird flu as wild birds across Wisconsin have tested positive for the virus This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Is it safe to use bird feeders with bird flu circulating?
CBC
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How humans in costumes teach whooping cranes to be cranes
How humans in costumes teach whooping cranes to be cranes 21 minutes ago Duration 1:50 Social Sharing At the International Crane Foundation (ICF) headquarters in Baraboo, Wis., Marianne Wellington gets ready for work. As a chick-rearing supervisor at the ICF, part of Wellington's job is to dress like a crane. Her costume includes a white robe and hood to obscure her human features, a crane puppet on her hand and, in her pocket, a recording of a contact call that crane parents make for their chicks. In the 1940s, whooping cranes were on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 20 left. Today there are more than 800. The ICF helped grow their numbers through conservation, breeding and reintroduction programs. That's where Wellington's team comes in: her role is crucial to the development and training of baby cranes for the wild. "Cranes will imprint on their keepers, and so we try to do everything that we can to have a bird know that it's a bird, and not a human being in a funny costume," Wellington says in this clip from the documentary Dances With Cranes.
CBC
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Whooping cranes were almost extinct — until Canadian ornithologist George Archibald learned to dance with them
Social Sharing In 1954, an eight-year-old George Archibald was sitting in a one-room school in Nova Scotia when he heard a CBC radio program about whooping cranes in Northern Canada. It was a dramatization: actors portrayed two cranes, and one was panicking about their nesting grounds being discovered, fearing the cranes would soon be killed. Her mate reassured her that they lived in an area protected by the Canadian government and they were safe. That program changed Archibald's life — and the cranes' future. As an adult, he devoted himself to conservation, co-founding the International Crane Foundation (ICF) and spending more than five decades facilitating the birds' stunning recovery. In the 1940s, there were fewer than 20 whooping cranes left. Today, there are more than 800, though they are still an endangered species. Dances With Cranes, an episode of The Nature of Things, features a year in the life of whooping cranes and the humans saving them from extinction. Wooing a bird that loved only humans Dances With Cranes has a very literal meaning — Archibald's work to bring back whooping cranes from the brink of extinction involved deep knee bends, flapping his arms, and jumping up and down. In the 1960s, a whooping crane — which came to be known as Tex — was hatched and raised in a zoo, but mistakes were made in her upbringing. "The director of the zoo took this little bird into his home, and it became hopelessly imprinted on humans," Archibald says in the documentary. "For 10 years, they tried pairing Tex to a male crane. She had absolutely no interest in cranes, but when male zookeepers walked by, she would start dancing." Archibald offered to work with Tex, and she was sent to the ICF in 1976. To trigger her reproductive cycle — so she could be artificially inseminated — Archibald learned to dance like a crane. Dancing is the bird's language of courtship. And after seven years, it worked. Tex laid a viable egg, producing a whooping crane named Gee Whiz. That bird produced 26 of his own offspring, which in turn resulted in about 130 more chicks. One Canadian's lifelong mission to save the whooping crane 35 minutes ago Duration 5:47 George Archibald, co-founder of the International Crane Foundation, once sat down with David Suzuki to talk about his work bringing the whooping crane back from the brink of extinction. 45 years later, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki visits Archibald to see the impact of his efforts. Watch Dances with Cranes now on CBC Gem and The Nature of Things YouTube channel. A female crane born to Gee Whiz became the first of the lineage to breed in the wild. The unique story and remarkable success earned Archibald his 15 minutes of fame: an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Archibald received a devastating phone call just before his interview: raccoons had entered Tex's enclosure and killed her. On stage, Archibald told Carson what had happened, and the studio audience gasped. "All across the country, I think a good portion of the 22 million people did the same," Archibald later told Audubon magazine. "And I think whooping cranes likely got a lot more sympathy through Tex's death than from her dance." Helping cranes to thrive in the wild Archibald's work in crane conservation has won him countless awards, four honorary doctorates and the Order of Canada. And the ICF continues to be a lifeline for all 15 crane species, working with specialists in more than 50 countries around the world. At the ICF headquarters in Baraboo, Wis., about 100 cranes live in a captive flock. Captive breeding is often necessary to save an endangered species from extinction, but the goal is to see the birds flourishing in the wild. "The last thing in the world you want is [for them] to be fixated on humans," Archibald says. Dances With Cranes shows ICF staff donning elaborate crane costumes and interacting with new chicks, encouraging them to forage for food. It's a laborious blend of rearing and caretaking, with the hopes the birds will eventually join an existing wild flock. The ICF also encourages adult whooping cranes to raise chicks when possible. Archibald says he has approached his decades of work with optimism and patience and quotes his mother as inspiration: "The only way to get something done is to do it." "I saw the crane foundation right from the beginning as a fertile egg that had to be incubated with the proper conditions, and at some point it's going to hatch," he says. "And I feel that way about all of our projects — that they're very difficult, but through faith and hard work, eventually you'll have a hatch."
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Why Uganda's iconic crested crane faces extinction
With its distinctive golden crown, red throat pouch and slender black legs, the crested crane is beloved in Uganda - featuring on the East African nation's flag and coat of arms. All the country's national sports teams are also nicknamed after the iconic bird, but in recent years it has gone into decline and conservationists say it may face extinction if more is not done to protect it. The bird is protected by law - it stipulates a life sentence and/or a fine of 20bn Ugandan shillings ($5m; £4m) for those found to have killed one. Going back centuries, local Buganda cultural superstition also protected the elegant fowl, which was seen as a symbol of wealth, good fortune and longevity. It was believed that if one killed a crane, its kith and kin would flock to the killer's home, hold vigil and mourn by collectively honking until the person went mad or even died. "Such stories instilled fear, and cranes would be respected and revered and not killed," Jimmy Muheebwa, a senior conservationist at Nature Uganda, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO), told the BBC. But for farmers in western Uganda, where the cranes mostly hang out, that fear has dissipated and often it is only conservationists who appear to know about the ban on killing them. "I really don't see any value in these birds because all they do is raid our plantations and eat our crops. We are worried about food security in this area," Tom Mucunguzi, a maize farmer from a village near Mbarara city in Western Region, told the BBC. Another farmer near Mbarara, Fausita Aritua, agreed, saying when she goes to her maize plot she spends the whole day chasing away the cranes - and if she cannot get there, she tries to get someone else to stand guard. "We no longer harvest as much as we used to do because these birds eat everything," she told the BBC. Also known as grey-crowned cranes, the birds are predominantly found in Uganda but are also in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. They are non-migratory, but make local and seasonal movements depending on food resources, nest site availability and the weather. Standing at about 1m (3.2ft) tall, the waterfowl mostly live in wetland areas - riverbanks, around dams and open grassland - where they breed and feed on grass seeds, small toads, frogs, insects and other invertebrates. But with the increasing human population, the high demand for food is pushing farmers to cultivate in wetlands, leaving crested cranes with diminishing areas to call home. "In eastern Africa, the population has declined terribly by over 80% in the last 25 years," Adalbert Ainomucunguzi, who leads the International Crane Foundation (ICF) in East Africa, told BBC. In the1970s, Uganda boasted a population of more than 100,000 crested cranes, but today that number has dwindled to a mere 10,000, according to Nature Uganda. This decline saw the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) put the crested crane on its red list of endangered bird species in 2012. "Despite its serenity, beauty and popularity, the bird is facing a serious threat. It means that if no urgent measures are taken to reverse this trend, we might see the cranes pushed to extinction," Dan Sseruge, a Ugandan ornithologist, told the BBC. Around Mbarara we found it was difficult to track down the birds - and only saw them early in the morning just after dawn. Conservationists say they used to be much easier to find in the landscape surrounding Mbarara. Dozens of cranes have in recent years been found dead after they were poisoned by rice and maize farmers in Lwengo district, in south-central Uganda. "One of the biggest threats against cranes is poisoning by the farmers. This is because the birds are causing a lot of crop damage," Gilbert Tayebwa, a conservation officer at ICF, told BBC. Mr Tayebwa said he has been engaging farmers to use different deterrent methods like scarecrows to protect their crops from invading cranes. Farmers like Philip Ntare, from Lwengo, said the cranes were sometimes mistakenly poisoned after eating crops sprayed with agro-chemicals and other pesticides. "I just chase them, because I grew up knowing the crested crane is not supposed to be killed. But government should consider compensating farmers for crop damage," he told the BBC. However, John Makombo, director of conservation at the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), said this was not possible. "It is one of those precious species that have freedom to go anywhere and so unfortunately the government is not liable for any damage done by the cranes," he told the BBC. Sarah Kugonza, an ICF conservationist, said the cranes also face a host of other threats - not just from farmers. Without the protective cover of the wetlands, their chicks are more likely to be captured by eagles. Cranes are finding day by day that they are living in an increasingly hostile environment. "Sometimes breeding areas are flooded and nowadays some cranes are killed by electricity lines when flying," Ms Kugonza told BBC. Their exceptional beauty has also put them at risk as people are increasingly capturing them to be pets, according to Mr Ainomucunguzi. But crested cranes, who can live for just over two decades, hardly ever breed in captivity as the birds are famously faithful. "It is a highly monogamous bird as it pairs once, for life. This means that if one of them is killed or domesticated, the likelihood of finding a new mating partner is almost zero," said Mr Muheebwa. They attract a mate by dancing, bowing and jumping - and are often seen walking as couples or families. A pair will define their own territory and can be very aggressive to defend it. Scientifically called Balearica regulorum gibbericeps, the cranes also have unique nesting patterns as they usually return to the same location annually, often laying between two and five eggs that are incubated by both sexes for anywhere between 28 and 31 days. Any destruction to these nesting areas impacts on these breeding patterns. Their monogamy has also attracted the unwelcome attention of local traditional healers, who claim that the parts of crested crane may bring faithfulness from a partner - or good luck. "Some people have been caught hunting cranes to take some of their body parts to witch doctors in a belief that they will get rich. Or, if you are a woman, your husband will never leave you," Mr Tayebwa from ICF said. This is also something conservationists are trying to counter - as well as alerting people to the law protecting cranes. And in an effort to reverse declining numbers, the Ugandan government and conservationist groups are now rallying communities to restore wetlands. President Yoweri Museveni, who comes from the Western Region, has been urging encroachers to vacate wetland areas and, according to local media, has declared 2025 a year of wetland conservation. The ICF has also recruited custodians to monitor and ensure that the cranes' breeding grounds are protected. Nature Uganda's Mr Muheebwa said these efforts were slowly helping to stabilise the situation but crane numbers remained "very low". For Mr Makombo, the UWA's future emphasis is going to be on setting an example when it comes to the law. "We shall arrest and prosecute those who are poisoning the cranes," he said. Chimpanzees 'self-medicate' with healing plants Deforestation pushes animals in Uganda forest to eat virus-laden bat poo Climate change: Saving Uganda's mountain gorillas Kenya rolls out poison in bid to cull a million crows Go to for more news from the African continent. Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica Africa Daily Focus on Africa
