Whooping cranes were almost extinct — until Canadian ornithologist George Archibald learned to dance with them
In 1954, an eight-year-old George Archibald was sitting in a one-room school in Nova Scotia when he heard a CBC radio program about whooping cranes in Northern Canada.
It was a dramatization: actors portrayed two cranes, and one was panicking about their nesting grounds being discovered, fearing the cranes would soon be killed. Her mate reassured her that they lived in an area protected by the Canadian government and they were safe.
That program changed Archibald's life — and the cranes' future. As an adult, he devoted himself to conservation, co-founding the International Crane Foundation (ICF) and spending more than five decades facilitating the birds' stunning recovery.
In the 1940s, there were fewer than 20 whooping cranes left. Today, there are more than 800, though they are still an endangered species. Dances With Cranes, an episode of The Nature of Things, features a year in the life of whooping cranes and the humans saving them from extinction.
Wooing a bird that loved only humans
Dances With Cranes has a very literal meaning — Archibald's work to bring back whooping cranes from the brink of extinction involved deep knee bends, flapping his arms, and jumping up and down.
In the 1960s, a whooping crane — which came to be known as Tex — was hatched and raised in a zoo, but mistakes were made in her upbringing.
"The director of the zoo took this little bird into his home, and it became hopelessly imprinted on humans," Archibald says in the documentary. "For 10 years, they tried pairing Tex to a male crane. She had absolutely no interest in cranes, but when male zookeepers walked by, she would start dancing."
Archibald offered to work with Tex, and she was sent to the ICF in 1976. To trigger her reproductive cycle — so she could be artificially inseminated — Archibald learned to dance like a crane. Dancing is the bird's language of courtship.
And after seven years, it worked. Tex laid a viable egg, producing a whooping crane named Gee Whiz. That bird produced 26 of his own offspring, which in turn resulted in about 130 more chicks.
A female crane born to Gee Whiz became the first of the lineage to breed in the wild.
The unique story and remarkable success earned Archibald his 15 minutes of fame: an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Archibald received a devastating phone call just before his interview: raccoons had entered Tex's enclosure and killed her.
On stage, Archibald told Carson what had happened, and the studio audience gasped.
"All across the country, I think a good portion of the 22 million people did the same," Archibald later told Audubon magazine. "And I think whooping cranes likely got a lot more sympathy through Tex's death than from her dance."
Helping cranes to thrive in the wild
Archibald's work in crane conservation has won him countless awards, four honorary doctorates and the Order of Canada. And the ICF continues to be a lifeline for all 15 crane species, working with specialists in more than 50 countries around the world.
At the ICF headquarters in Baraboo, Wis., about 100 cranes live in a captive flock. Captive breeding is often necessary to save an endangered species from extinction, but the goal is to see the birds flourishing in the wild.
"The last thing in the world you want is [for them] to be fixated on humans," Archibald says.
Dances With Cranes shows ICF staff donning elaborate crane costumes and interacting with new chicks, encouraging them to forage for food. It's a laborious blend of rearing and caretaking, with the hopes the birds will eventually join an existing wild flock. The ICF also encourages adult whooping cranes to raise chicks when possible.
Archibald says he has approached his decades of work with optimism and patience and quotes his mother as inspiration: "The only way to get something done is to do it."
"I saw the crane foundation right from the beginning as a fertile egg that had to be incubated with the proper conditions, and at some point it's going to hatch," he says. "And I feel that way about all of our projects — that they're very difficult, but through faith and hard work, eventually you'll have a hatch."
Watch Dances With Cranes on CBC Gem and The Nature of Things YouTube channel.
