River attracts cranes

Sandhill Cranes. Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Published April 3, 2003, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “River attracts cranes, cranes attract admirers.”

2014 Update: Visit Rowe Audubon Sanctuary, www.rowe.audubon.org, and the Crane Trust Nature and Visitors Center, www.cranetrust.org, whether or not you arrive in time for crane migration or reserve a spot in their blinds.

By Barb Gorges

The morning sun was about to wash the Platte River in gold and rose-colored light. The shallow water gleamed silver wherever it wasn’t full of thousands of sandhill cranes agitating for liftoff. Their craa-acking calls filled the air.

It’s a spectacle that can be witnessed every year in March and early April along an 80-mile stretch of the Platte in central Nebraska. Mass gatherings of the 500,000 cranes don’t happen on any other river between the cranes’ main wintering grounds in southern Texas and New Mexico and their breeding grounds which can be as far north as Alaska and eastern Siberia.

Every evening the cranes leave the fields and wetlands where they’ve been feasting on waste corn, invertebrates, worms and snails. In squadrons they arrive at the river to stand together, resting in the wide and shallow channels to avoid predators such as coyotes.

Before sunrise, small groups of the leggy 3- to 4-foot tall gray birds begin to fly out to the fields, their bodies streamlined and the flapping of their six foot wingspans propelling them at a majestic speed.

Sometimes, with a roar of wings and a clamoring of voices, a whole section of river seems to lift off in response to some seen or unseen disruption.

A couple weeks ago, members and friends of the Audubon chapter in Cheyenne watched cranes from behind a screen of tall weeds on the river bank a respectful distance away. Some of us wondered who the first non-natives were to remark on this natural extravaganza.

We agreed it wouldn’t have been the wagon train pioneers in the 1840s. They didn’t even leave Missouri until April each year. Early trappers on their seasonal peregrinations may not have arrived at the right stretch of river at the right time either.

But by 1974, the crane phenomenon was well enough known that the National Audubon Society, with funds from Lillian Annette Rowe, bought 2 ½ miles of river channel to establish a bird sanctuary.

Dams along the Platte have almost eliminated the spring flooding that controlled vegetation growth, so Rowe Sanctuary staff and volunteers use mechanical means to maintain the wide channels and open sandbars the cranes prefer. The river through the sanctuary looks bulldozed because it is.

There’s been a lot of progress since my first visit several years ago. And in the year since my last visit, the effort to build a visitor center was begun and completed, producing the second largest straw bale-constructed building in the U.S.

What was once a natural event known only to locals and bird watchers is now a well-advertised tourist attraction. Crane viewing opportunities, either free or for a fee, are marked on a special map available from local businesses from Kearney to Grand Island. Passengers from a tour bus filled Rowe Sanctuary’s gift shop by the time we arrived.

I’m not sure how I feel about commercializing bird watching opportunities. On one hand, some of us would rather discover nature on our own—not an easy task when you need to know somebody who knows somebody who will allow you to find a crane viewing spot on their property.

Instead of interpretive signs at eye-level, we must, as the early settlers did, bring our previous experience and our future research to bear on our ability to understand what we’ve seen. It’s called learning by discovery.

On the other hand, a non-profit organization like Rowe Sanctuary is funding its conservation efforts by charging for observation blind reservations and by selling the best selection of crane-related items to be found.

People often don’t value an experience unless they pay for it. The more people who come to value cranes, the better chance necessary habitat management will be supported politically and financially.

As long as people promoting eco-tourism keep the welfare of the wildlife and natural resources their first priority, they will be assured of having the basis for their business continue indefinitely.

In that respect, eco-tourism benefits from good stewardship in the same way as other uses of renewable resources such as timbering, grazing, farming, hunting and fishing.

Whatever we think of the politics of river and wildlife management, there is still the soul-pleasing aspect of sharing the sunrise with thousands of birds who have figured out how to travel hundreds of miles on nothing but waste corn and creepy-crawlies. Don’t ever underestimate a bird-brain.