In past years, Crowe would have taken this opportunity to inject Walnut with a syringe of crane semen. Alas, a matchmaker in Memphis — the keeper of the white-naped crane studbook, whose job is to ensure a genetically diverse captive population — has decreed that they don’t need any more babies from Walnut, at least not this year. But that doesn’t stop Crowe and Walnut from going through the motions all summer long, five days a week, sometimes several times a day. “It’s not exactly fun for me, but it keeps Walnut happy,” Crowe says.
More to the point, this strange cross-species seduction has helped ensure that white-naped cranes continue to exist, at least in captivity, says Warren Lynch, a fellow zookeeper at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “It’s amazing, what Chris has accomplished with Walnut,” Lynch says. “This isn’t something just anyone can do.” [...]
Though it would have been better to return the birds to the wild, international tensions in 1978 made that impossible, Putnam recalls. Plus, no one knew exactly where in China they had been captured, or what the birds might have been exposed to during transit. “We didn’t want to release birds that might carry diseases and put them back into the wild flock,” Putnam says. [...]
In addition to demanding vast areas of untrammeled wilderness, these difficult birds seem almost drawn to marginal places. For instance, one of the white-naped cranes’ most important wintering grounds is the 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. There, in a strange, de facto nature preserve, white-naped cranes and their even-more endangered cousins, red-crowned cranes, root for tubers among the land mines they are too light to trigger. If tensions between the Koreas subside, however, the cranes will be in trouble. Farmers are already clamoring for access to the nutrient-rich land, and developers are planning for a reunification city and deepwater port. [...]
Standards for raising cranes have changed since then. Now, highly trained zookeepers take care of the birds, and chicks are either left with their parents or raised by foster parent cranes, if at all possible. That’s because the job of crane parent is more nuanced than we humans once realized. Cranes have elaborate body language and sophisticated hunting techniques — skills that chicks learn, at least in part, from observing their parents. In addition, if a captive-born chick is slated to be released into the wild, a fear of humans is crucial to their survival.
No comments:
Post a Comment