“When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.”

– Aldo Leopold on the call of the sandhill crane

During my Christmas day stroll with family and Tobi, I came across a crumbling old stump harboring an exquisite feathered creature. The majestic bird looked to be either a Whooping Crane or Sandhill crane - the two largest birds of North America.

While North America has many struggling ecosystems, it's so important that we remember the stories of hope and recovery too. The Sandhill crane is one such story - once endangered, their numbers have rebounded thanks to determined humans working to save them. Getting to know these creatures better can only inspire more hope for future environmental recoveries. I'm looking forward to learning more about the whooping cranes on my trip south this February with Curtis. If you know any other inspiring stories of environmental recovery please share them with me?

When Aldo Leopold wrote the above quote in his 1937 essay “Marshland Elegy,” there was an estimated 25 pair of nesting sandhill cranes in Wisconsin. Leopold had little hope that the population would recover and also wrote in that essay, “The last crane may well trumpet his farewell and spiral skyward from the great marsh.”

Due to hunting and the loss of wetland habitat, the sandhill crane was an endangered species in Leopold’s time, but today it is considered a conservation success story. According to the International Crane Foundation, the sandhill crane population today is 650,000, which makes it the most numerous of the world’s cranes.-

We need these stories of recovery our society needs to believe we can do this.