E64 George Archibald – Dancing with Whooping Cranes & Saving the World's Rarest Birds 🏗️🦩

Few people have done more to save cranes than George Archibald.

In this episode of Naturally Scott, Scott Harris sits down with the co-founder of the International Crane Foundation for a remarkable conversation spanning decades of conservation, adventure, and hope. George shares the incredible story of helping rescue the Whooping Crane from the brink of extinction, including his famous partnership with a crane named Tex and the unexpected journey that led from a Wisconsin field to Johnny Carson's stage. 

The conversation also explores the migration of more than a million Sandhill Cranes through Nebraska's Platte River Valley, conservation work across Africa and Asia, and the challenge of protecting cranes while improving the lives of the people who share their landscapes. 

In this episode:

🏗️ The story of Tex, the world's most famous Whooping Crane
 🦩 How dancing helped save a species from extinction
 🌎 The International Crane Foundation's work across the globe
 🕊️ One million Sandhill Cranes on Nebraska's Platte River
 🌍 Conservation projects in Africa, Korea, and beyond
 👨‍🌾 Why successful conservation must benefit local communities
 ✨ Hope for some of the world's rarest birds

George's life story is a reminder that one person truly can make a difference—and that saving wildlife often begins with relationships, persistence, and a willingness to think differently.

👉 Stay up to date and get bonus content here: https://naturallyscott.kit.com/5fd12c6752

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:36

That was tens of thousands of sandhill cranes on the Platte River in Nebraska in March. An unbelievable sight, one of the truly unique things in nature, and a beautiful thing to see. If you've seen it, great. And if you haven't, I hope that you get to one day. This is Naturally Scott. I'm your host, Scott Harris. And last month I was at the Platte River during migration for the San Yo Cranes. I was fortunate enough to be a guest of the Crane Trust. And maybe the highlight of that was getting to meet today's guest, George Archibald, who was also a guest. We got to share a dormitory, a term I haven't used since college. So that was kind of cool. We quickly became friends, we shared a few stories and had an opportunity to talk about a variety of different things, including, of course, cranes, which is what we're going to talk about today. So, George, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so glad you're here. For those of you that don't know George, uh, he is a world-renowned crane expert. He has devoted a lifetime to their study and preservation. Um, when I read his book, uh My Life with Cranes, one of the things that came through in that book is I'd met a real-life Forrest Gump. Uh, George has been everywhere and met everybody and done everything related to cranes. It's really quite an amazing thing uh to talk about and to hear his stories, both in person and through the book. And if you haven't read the book, I strongly recommend it, My Life with Cranes by George Archibald. There are stories after stories after stories in there. Forgive me, we won't be able to cover all of them today, unfortunately, but we're gonna hit some of the highlights. Um, George, let's start with Tex, probably the most famous crane in the world and an amazing experience for you dating back a while ago, and it involves Johnny Carson and dancing and uh saving cranes in you. So tell us about that if you would.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Well, um the whooping crane almost was lost from Earth. In 1941, there were only 16 individuals left in the migratory flock. And by the 1960s, the population had increased to about 70. And there were only there was only one pair in captivity, and they were at the San Antonio Zoo. And the next year they hatched a chick. And fearing that it would not survive with its parents, the zoo director raised it in his home and it became imprinted on humans. Subsequently, it was taken to a government research station on whooping cranes called the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. And for 10 years they tried to pair her to a crane, but she would not uh uh pair with a crane. She was interested in humans, in particular males with dark hair. And um they sent her to the Crane Foundation for me to work with her. We live in Barabo, Wisconsin, which is halfway across the country from the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. So she arrived in a big plywood crate, and for the next uh seven years I worked with that bird. Uh every spring I would spend uh from dawn till dark with her out in a large grassy field, right? A small little cabin there, and I would work inside and she'd be outside, and uh every once in a while I would go out and take a walk with her and have a dance with her. And each year she produced an egg, but for various reasons the egg did not hatch or the embryo was malformed. And um finally in 1982 we hatched a chick and it it was healthy and we called it Gee Whiz. Uh and it grew up to be a prolific whooping crane that produced 24 offspring in his life. He died at the age of 38, but the genes from that captive pair of whooping cranes were back in the wild as the population continued to increase. And uh that's basically the story, and I appeared on the Johnny Carson show in 19 uh eighty two, three weeks after Gee Wiz hatched, and the night before I went on, uh Tex was killed by a pack of raccoons. So very dramatic, and uh anyway, that's the story.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Well, congratulations on the positive parts of that, and even all these decades later, I am sorry about the loss. Um now there had been raccoons around Tex for a while, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Yes, uh we never had trouble with raccoons. Cranes are large birds, but a neighboring farm to the Crane Foundation uh lost some of their chickens, which were free-ranging, so they locked up the chickens, but the raccoons apparently had a taste for blood of birds, and they began to attack the birds in captivity at the Crane Foundation.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Well, I'm so sorry for that loss. Now you you mentioned that Gee Whiz lives to be 38 years old.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Yes, that's old for a whooping crane. Usually they they don't live beyond 25 or 30 years, but he was an old bird, but he was very healthy and produced many offspring.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

And does living in captivity extend their life expectancy?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Yes, because they have there's no risk uh as long as you keep the raccoons out and other predators, and uh we have, of course, veterinary care if they have some problem, and birds usually live a lot longer in captivity than they would in nature.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Okay. But 38 years is still a good long time for a crane, even in captivity. Yeah. Well, fantastic. All right, talk to me about the Platte, the Platte River in Nebraska in March, which I think is a life highlight, not just for birders or fans of cranes, but for anybody who loves the outdoors. So tell me about your thoughts and your experiences there.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Well, the Platte River is just a trickle compared to what it used to be. And cranes are birds of tradition. So they had a tradition of stopping there when the Platte River in spring was a mile wide and an inch deep, and that inch supported a whole group of plants that provided a superabundance of tubers uh for birds to eat, cranes in particular. They dig them out of the ground. So for thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands of years, great numbers of birds would gather on this shallow floodplain to build up their body fat before the long migration to the Arctic. But the river became a trickle because it was dammed upstream to provide water for irrigation and for cities, and only this small river runs from the west to the east today, and the former wetlands are now cornfields. But that corn provides two that crop provides two things for the cranes. One it provides corn, which is carbohydrates, and the other thing it provides earthworms, which the cranes eat. And they increase their body weight by about um 18% uh during about a three-week to four-week period when they're on the Platte. They roost at night on islands, sandy islands in the Platte River. And there's a wonderful organization there, the Crane Trust, that is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making things good for the cranes and other birds and wildlife. And uh they clear the river of brushy vegetation that has encroached. And in the summertime, they can go out there with tractors and other large machines and keep these sandbars open. The Platte River practically dries up in the summer, so you can get out there and do that. And so they have an open area for roosting at night, and in early morning they fly out into the cornfields far and wide to feed. But when they come back to the river, because the river is so small, huge numbers of birds can see be seen in a small area. For example, from the crane trust, as you look up and down the river, it's covered by cranes. They estimate maybe uh 50,000 birds within the view at one spot. And uh it's uh very unusual in uh presettlement times, those we birds would have been scattered over a wide area, but now they're concentrated. And because the plaid is continuing to flow, although greatly reduced, it keeps the water clean at the roosting spots and it doesn't get contaminated as it would if they were nesting in water that wasn't moving. So we believe this is a great uh benefit now as we have the scepter of avian influenza hanging over us in other parts of the world. Tens of thousands of cranes have died from avian influenza. Uh so the Platte River, uh, in part by accident, well, if you consider what people are doing in accident, the whole thing has changed from it was in prehistoric times, and now we have a new situation. And thanks to the work of the Crane Trust, the Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society, and many others, uh a safe home for the cranes has been created during their long passage from Mexico and southwestern United States on their way to breeding grounds in Canada, Alaska, and in eastern Siberia. So apparently during the month of March, there are 1.2 million cranes stopping along 80 miles of river, but there are only patches of that river where they can actually land because in other areas there are too many bushes and trees. They like wide open areas where they have excellent visibility as a protection from coyotes in particular.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

I lost you there for a second, George. Sorry about that. Um I've heard the as far as migration in the Platte, the Platte described as the pinched part of an hourglass. That these sand hill cranes start from the south, as you had said, southwestern U.S. and Mexico. And when they get north, they spread out as far as Siberia. But when they're coming through this part of through Nebraska, this 80-mile stretch, they come together in this tight pinch. And that's why we have upwards of a million birds in one small area. Is that fairly accurate?

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

And is this the greatest concentration of cranes in the world?

SPEAKER_02 13:48

There are more plranes um along the Platte River in March than all the other species of cranes combined in the world. Many species of cranes are endangered. For example, the whooping crane, there are only 600 birds left in the wild. The red-crowned crane is only 5,000, the Siberian crane is 7,000, three or four species are in the teens of thousands, and so on. That's why uh I have devoted my life to helping the cranes, not only the whooping crane, but all these other uh threatened and endangered cranes in Asia and in Africa as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

And there are 15 or 16 different species of cranes? 15. 15 and you work with all of them?

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yes. Uh our foundation does. We have 176 employees right now and projects uh all around the world.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

And what kind of projects? Highlight a couple of them for us.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Well, our star project in Africa, or we have three star projects. I'll just describe one. It's on the Kafui River, which is a tributary of the Zambezi River, and this floodplain is in Zambia, and about uh 25% of all the wattled cranes in Africa are living on that floodplain. And there's a dam upstream and some dams downstream, and the whole hydrological cycle has been altered. So we are working on environmental releases of water from the dams to try to simulate what happened there before they were dammed. And we are working on the major floodplain there called the Kafui Flats, where there are thousands of pastoralists with tens of thousands of domestic animals, but also a unique type of antelope called the Kafui Leshwi and all of these cranes. We have a problem with invasive mimosa pigra, a very thorny uh bush from South America, as an invader and covering the parts of the wetland with shrubs, making it useless to the animals that are adapted to that floodplain. So we have to get rid of that. We're working on education and social welfare programs for the local people. We want to make a win-win-win, three wins. One win for the cranes, one win for biodiversity, and the third win for the local people. Because unless the needs of the local people are met, uh, nature doesn't survive. And what are those needs? How do how do the local people win? Uh so kids can get into schools and develop skills that are are different from fishing and following cattle around. And if they can have those skills, their families can move into more urban areas and have a better life. So building schools with the proper latrines in the villages is one thing that we're doing. Uh so it's it's down to education. We're also giving employment to a lot of the local people in the removal of the invasive shrub, mimosa pigra. Uh so we have a lot of a lot of our funding is spent on helping the local people.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

And are they receptive to that? Oh yeah, they sure are.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

With open arms.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Is there anybody pushing back against removing this invasive plant?

SPEAKER_02 18:06

No. They can use it for firewood.

unknown 18:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

And uh they're very happy to not only get firewood, but also to have the land reopened for cattle grazing.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Because the plant restricts that.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

You mentioned there's a couple other projects in Africa. Highlight a second one for us, please.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

The second one is uh they're actually in three parts, one in Kenya, one in Uganda, and one in Rwanda. They share uh small wetlands, small scattered wetlands all over the place with the gray-crowned crane. Beautiful crane with a huge crest on its head. And because of the population increase, uh, the wetlands are being drained and turned into uh farm fields. So we are working with the local people to save the wetlands at the same time help the local people with alternative crops that produce much more money. And those crops are mushrooms and honey bees growing um beehives. And um also better uh some of the fields that normally would have had corn on them, we can now put into um various types of grasses for grazing by their cattle. So they can keep each family can have a couple of head of cattle and get the milk and all the benefits from that. In addition, we're also doing schools, latrines, family planning, and so on, uh uh to help, especially to help the women in those areas. We found the women to be great leaders in the implementation of a lot of these programs.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

And all of this is done through the Crane Foundation.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Yeah. We can't cover the whole country, of course. But what we do are model projects in uh in a rather limited area, and uh we want to produce models that can be replicated. We call it the scaling up of our programs. Uh we want our programs to be self-sufficient so that the whole thing can continue long after we're gone and not depend on external funding forever. And uh, as people are learning these two neat new techniques and making more money and are educated about family planning and so on, we've seen a complete turnaround in everything.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

And is there in in some of these programs, is there um an ecotourism component to this?

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Yeah, but it's very minor because uh ecotourism is mainly for the nature reserves where you have the elephants and rhinos and all that. Most of our cranes are living on small wetlands or large wetlands in unprotected areas, out in areas where it's full of people. In the protected areas, they've been they've and it's sad to say, the local people that live there were removed and moved into other regions. In some cases, not all cases, but often that's the way.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Just like in our protected areas, you can't go build a house in a national wildlife refuge or a national park. It is frowned upon, isn't it? It's frowned upon. But in Africa, we're we're working out there. Well, just like in Nebraska, the land where the cranes are feeding is is mostly privately owned.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

And those private landowners, do they work? Work well with the Crane Trust and others in an effort to make this work for everybody?

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Actually, it's a benign relationship with the farmers. Uh they've harvested their fields. Uh there's just waste grain out there, so there's no negative economic impact on the farmers in Nebraska. In other parts of the country, we do have conflict with farmers and cranes because the cranes pull up corn after it's planted and will do a lot of crop damage. So the crane foundation has done a great deal of research on this, and we now have a product that's approved by the uh EPA called Avapel. It's a powder, an organic powder, and you put it on the corn seed, and the cranes don't like to eat that corn.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

That sounds like a win-win. Yeah. Okay, fantastic. Let's let's shift continents. Uh you've got a story about some time you spent in Korea that I think the listeners would love to hear.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Well, uh, I've worked in both North Korea and South Korea, which is quite a contrast. In North Korea, everything is owned by the government, and uh the the country is very isolated. After the Soviet Union fell apart in 1990, uh the new Russia could not afford to send subsidies to North Korea, and one of the subsidies was free fertilizer. In the winter, when the cranes came down into North Korea, they were feeding on waste grain in the agricultural fields, some of which were rice fields, but also corn and wheat fields. But uh during the 1990s, there was a depletion of so uh fertilizer because uh they were no longer getting the subsidy from the former Soviet Union. And by 1997, the food production was so low that three million people starved to death. And at the same time, cranes were killed and other wildlife were killed to try to feed people, and a lot of birds appeared in South Korea along the demilitarized zone, where those species always wintered in some numbers, but suddenly there was this huge influx in the 1990s. And now we can't find hardly uh any cranes in North Korea, and uh they migrate across and head for the security of the demilitarized zone. Uh in South Korea, there's so much development that whole valleys are covered by cities and greenhouses and uh other types of places that make it completely impossible for cranes. And the cranes have been pushed north into the farmlands surrounding the DMZ where urban development is not allowed as the security for a buffer zone south of the DMZ. The DMZ is three miles wide, goes right across the country, and is forested since the Korean War ended in 1953. But the farmland in the buffer zone provides an accidental sanctuary for thousands of cranes and so on. So we are working with our Korean colleagues on trying to uh make a safe environment for the cranes in the future. A war between the Koreas would in the winter would annihilate a lot of these birds. And if peace came, those farmlands are zoned for development to make reunification communities, big cities, skyscrapers bordering these fields are are 22 million people today. So if we can get some of this land in the agricultural area bordering the DMC protected, uh hopefully uh if peace comes to the Korean peninsula, there'll be a place for our birds.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

And has there been progress made in setting aside some of this land?

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Yeah, the the Korean Trust for the Environment has been able to buy a boat. You're gonna laugh at this, but I think three acres of land, uh, and it costs them $200,000. But now the price of land has even escalated beyond that. And we're trying to find one area that we might be able to have a fundraiser to buy. I mean, that seems ridiculous, that small amount of land. But in the future it could be that that would be an artificial feeding station where the cranes are fed in the winter and they can survive. But then of course we have the threat from things like avian influenza, and we have to have clean water for them, and and uh so I've been working in Korea since the 19 uh early 1970s. Back then the cranes were very rare because of the DMZ area, and they're they're actually feeding them now, uh putting corn out for them and so on. The crane numbers. When I worked in Korea back in 1974, there were about 150, no, maybe 200 red-crowned cranes, and today we have 3,000. There were about maybe 100 white-naped cranes, and today we have 12,000 on the DMZ, and we have a hundred thousand geese of several species and a lot of other birds. So it's the world's great accidental sanctuary. That's the story. We're still midstream, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

It's a great story. I hope we're able to I hope we're able to both achieve peace and save the uh and save the birds, the cranes and the geese and whatnot. So it sounds like a uh uh needle that needs to be threaded, but possibly it can be. So, George, as we as we wrap up for today, uh what is the future of the International Crane Foundation? Where where are where are you going?

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Uh we believe in a three-part win. A win for the cranes, a win for biodiversity, and a win for the local people that live near these birds. And uh we are a strong organization. We're small, but we're well funded, and we have 10,000 members that support us, and we're building up our endowment funds. We now have 176 employees. We started with zero money and zero employees for the first five years. We put all the money into the projects, and uh we have a beautiful campus here near Barabo, Wisconsin, um, 260 acres, and we have what we call Crane City, where we breed all these endangered cranes as a safeguard against their extinction in the wild or their extirpation from the wild. So uh I was the um co-founder and the director for the first 27 years, but in the year 2000, I turned it over to my very capable uh deputy director, Jim Harris, and he worked uh with us until his death in 2018. But he handed it over to someone who began as an intern back in 1986, Rich Belfast. So for the past 15 years, uh Rich has been our leader and he's done a wonderful job, uh, as have our board of directors and our staff. I feel very good about the future of the Crane Foundation, and I hope the cranes do well, as they have continued to do. They've increased enormously the very rare cranes since we started. We've been part of the story, but most of the story is done by our wonderful colleagues who are in foreign countries and live side by side with these beautiful birds.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Well, I don't want to underplay your commitment and the work you've done, George, because this doesn't happen without you. So thank you for that. Um, if you've got questions for me, you can send me an email, Scott at naturaliscott.com. If you're watching this on YouTube, I'll throw that up there on the screen. Um, if you got questions for George, I can forward them to him. Also, if you are watching this on YouTube, do me a favor and hit subscribe. Every time you do, YouTube pushes this out to more people. And I think, I think the world's a better place if people hear George's story and and my other guests. We're blessed to have some great people on there. So there's no cost to it, there's no time. Just hit subscribe. Much appreciated. George, thank you so much for being a part of this, for all of the work that you do, and for the time we got to spend together in Nebraska. I'm looking forward to one day spending some time with you in uh Varaboo, Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

Well, I invite you and your listeners to come and visit the Crane Foundation. We are open from the 1st of April until the end of October, and you can meet all 15 species of cranes and learn more about what we're doing. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Take advantage of that. I'd like to close every show the same way. I encourage the audience to get outside. You can define outside your back porch, your front yard, your local park, the DMZ in Korea, whatever it is. Um, but when you're out there, a couple of things. Make sure that you stay safe and stay curious. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Scott Harris. This is Naturally Scott, our guest today, and we're honored to have had him, George Archibald of the International Crane Foundation. Take care, George. Thank you, Scott.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris. Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra. Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at Naturally Scott Harris. If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.