Reading Pictures

Getting Along

The 60 sandhill cranes in this photograph (count them, and note that some have their heads down) are more than the entire breeding population of cranes in Illinois and Wisconsin 80 years ago. Today, more than 10,000 cranes breed in Wisconsin each year, and the Illinois breeding population is up from zero to scores.

Those three white birds are whooping cranes. East of the Mississippi, this species had been extinct as a breeding population until last spring, when the first wild whooper babies in more than 100 years hatched in a Wisconsin marsh.

But what’s returned is not nature as we normally think of it. Those crane heads are down for a reason. They’re eating corn in a cornfield. Cranes, deer, and all large wildlife are now living in civilization, as we like to call it, and they depend on people.

Look at the five horizontal stripes that compose this scene at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana. The bottom stripe is the harvested corn, planted by a farmer with a contract that requires him to leave the corn stubble and waste grain for wildlife. Next stripe up is the cranes, which wouldn’t be here if the farming stopped and those trees advanced. Next stripe is one measly and whimsical row of unharvested corn. The russet stripe above the corn and wildlife is big bluestem grass, planted on the raised bank of a drainage ditch. Finally the top stripe is the floodplain forest of river birch and pin oak. Varying intensities of fire over the years once blended the edges of this forest into a prairie, savanna, and wetland mosaic. Now these close, straight trees stop at the ditch.

A large percentage of the sandhill cranes east of the Mississippi — now 50,000 strong — flock to the managed, plowed, ditched, manipulated land of Jasper-Pulaski because whole, healthy ecosystems are not to be had.

But at least they have somewhere to go — and that’s largely because Jasper-Pulaski was acquired and managed for hunting. As the preserve’s Web site puts it, “Most revenues used in land acquisition, development, operation, and maintenance...are derived from the sale of hunting, fishing and trapping licenses....Indiana hunters, anglers, and trappers are proud to provide this property for the enjoyment of all people.”

For decades, the rebounding numbers of sandhill cranes have been a conservation bright spot. Now, a dedicated and miracle-working crew of conservationists are bringing back their cousins, the whooping cranes, and they’re doing so well that these once-nearly-extinct-in-the-world whoopers have become part of Chicago Wilderness migration highlights every spring and fall.

If deer, hunters, cranes, and birders can get along, it’s a good omen for the future of the planet.

Photo by Jerry Goldner. Words by Stephen Packard. Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area courtesy of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Whooping cranes thanks to the International Crane Foundation and the entire Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership.

Reading Pictures

Getting Along

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