I thought this might be interesting :


#4 CRANES FAIL TO APPEAR AT INDIAN HOME; ENDANGERED BIRDS ALARM SCIENTISTS

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service

BHARATPUR, India - The scientists were ready, armed with electronic
transmitters and six baby cranes who had been reared on crane chow and fed
by human parents dressed in bird costumes.

But for the first time in memory, snowy white Siberian cranes did not
appear at their Indian wintering grounds, alarming preservationists and
dashing hopes for one of the international scientific community's most
unusual and ambitious efforts to save an endangered species. Wildlife
biologists believe some of the cranes may have been shot and killed while
flying south over war-ravaged Afghanistan.

With the number of Siberian cranes that winter in India dwindling from
200 in 1965 to a mere five last year, crane experts converged on the
Keoladeo Ghana National Park here last month, planning to take six crane
chicks bred in captivity and release them with their migrating wild
relatives from Siberia.

Scientists hoped the adults would teach the youngsters - fitted with
electronic transmitters monitored by satellite - the centuries-old,
3,400-mile migration route over the Himalaya Mountains between India and
Siberia. Unlike many other birds, cranes are not born with the instinct to
fly their migration paths.

"We're running out of time," said Katie Richter, an Ohio native among
the group of preservationists working on the crane project partially
sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wisconsin-based
International Crane Foundation. "It already may be too late to save them."

The Siberian crane - a tall, stately bird with luminescent white plumage
and a bright red face and beak - has become a symbol for international
efforts to preserve endangered birds and their environments, much as the
whooping crane was the subject of preservation efforts two decades ago in
the United States.

"If you try and talk generally about how people and the environment
relate, people just yawn," said David A. Ferguson of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service's office of international affairs, which monitors the
agency's preservation programs in foreign countries.

"But if you talk about saving a particular species, such as a crane with
a seven-foot wingspan - that is something people can relate to," he said.
"A big crane can get people's interest better than a worm or a fish."

The "Sibes," as the big birds are known among enthusiasts, have been
particularly hard hit by rapid development, deforestation, uncontrolled
hunting and the lack of wildlife preservation efforts in many of the
developing nations they visit on their treacherous twice-yearly migrations.

A few years ago, several Siberian crane carcasses were rumored to have
been discovered in the meat bazaar in Kabul, the Afghan capital. In
Pakistan, migrating flocks of Siberian cranes and other large birds
reportedly have been downed by hunters hurling rocks tied to twine.

Ornithologists believe the Siberian cranes that migrate west to India
and Iran are near extinction. None of the cranes has so far reached India
this year, and only a small flock of six Sibes has been spotted in Iran.
Another branch of the Siberian crane family, the shrinking eastern flock of
about 2,500 Sibes, winters in China. No other flocks are known to exist in
the wild.

For the past two years, scientists from the United States, Russia, India
and Japan have collaborated in an elaborate scheme to attempt to replenish
the dying western flock.

First, eggs were taken from the nests of Siberian cranes raised at the
International Crane Foundation's preserve in Wisconsin and flown - in
insulated Styrofoam boxes warmed with hot water bottles - to Moscow, where
they were hatched in incubators. In addition to turning the eggs properly
in the incubators, scientists blasted cool air on the eggs each time they
were turned to simulate the mother leaving her warm nest in the brisk
Siberian temperatures.

The crane chicks, Bugle and White, were released with their wild cousins
in Siberia, but apparantly did not have enough time to bond with adult
birds and refused to fly south to India with them last winter.

This year, Bugle and White, along with four other chicks - Gorby and
Boris, who were hatched in Wisconsin, and Billy and Bushy, who were raised
in a Moscow preserve - were flown to the Indian sanctuary here at
Bharatpur. For the first time, scientists were going to try to integrate
incubator chicks with adults at wintering grounds rather than breeding
grounds. Although the procedure was considered risky, scientists hoped the
six young birds would be adopted by the wild Sibes, who would then teach
them the route over the world's highest mountain range to Siberia.

"Anything is worth trying," said Belinda Wright, a naturalist and
filmmaker participating in the crane watch at Bharatpur.

But, keeping Billy and Bushy and the other artificially incubated birds
convinced they are cranes has been a major problem. "If they grow up being
fed by humans, they will not mate with other cranes," said Richter. "They
solicit people for mating."

In an attempt to avoid confusing the young Sibes, the crane's caretakers
dish out daily rations of crane chow and plant tubers while wearing a bird
costume - a crude rendition of "Sesame Street's" Big Bird with a billowing
white cloak fringed with feather-like jagged edges and a white hood with a
long gray beak. Park rangers guard the secluded cages from a distance,
keeping curious humans from venturing within visual range.

In another experiment using new technology, scientists planned to attach
small electronic transmitters to the Bharatpur chicks so their flight
patterns could be monitored by satellite. Experiments last year on the more
plentiful common crane, which also breeds in Siberia, were not very
successful.

The signals disappeared after a few weeks, an indication the batteries
had failed, but one transmitter inexplicably began working several months
later with signals indicating the crane had moved to an area on the border
of Iran and Afghanistan.

Despite years of studying Siberian cranes, scientists still know little
about their habits. The flock that had been wintering in India returned to
the same square kilometer of the Bharatpur sanctuary every year for
decades, according to park officials.

The park was actually created as a maharajah's hunting preserve where a
stone monument in the park boasts that one 1914 hunting party killed 4,000
birds in a single day. Today, the 29-square-mile park in Rajasthan, south
of New Delhi, is one of the world's most famous wildlife sanctuaries.

Local park officials and scientists now have all but given up on the
adult cranes reaching Bharatpur. As long as their arrival has been
recorded, the Sibes have never landed later than Jan. 13. Now the teams
tentatively are planning to take the young cranes to Siberia and attempt to
integrate them with other flocks.

"The Siberian crane is still a huge puzzle," said the Fish and Wildlife
Service's Ferguson. "We're trying to find the different pieces so we can
get a management program to help protect them."

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End of India News Network Digest
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