Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership
NEWS RELEASE
Kohlers and Windway Capital Corp. Flight Team Honored for Support of Whooping Crane Reintroduction
May 9, 2007
Contact:
Rachel F. Levin, (612) 713-5311
Terry and Mary Kohler and the flight team of Windway Capital Corp., who have made significant contributions to the recovery of endangered whooping cranes in eastern North America, were honored by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Interior, presented the department’s Cooperative Conservation Award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
The award recognizes conservation achievements by groups of diverse partners, including federal, state, local and tribal governments, non-government organizations, and individuals. The Kohlers and the flight team of Sheboygan, Wis.-based Windway Capital Corp., have donated time, equipment and funds that have been among the keys to the success of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, an international coalition of public and private groups that is reintroducing this highly imperiled species in eastern North America.
The Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey are among the nine founding members of this partnership.
“Terry and Mary Kohler and their flight team at Windway Capital Corp. have truly helped to make wildlife history with their generous support of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership,” said Robyn Thorson, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Midwest Regional Director. “Their dedication is a testament to the human spirit.”
For nearly two decades, the Kohlers have made significant contributions to migratory bird conservation in the United States and abroad. From 1987 to 1996, they made annual flights to Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park to bring back the eggs that have served as the foundation for the reintroduced eastern migratory whooping crane population, which migrates between Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin and Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf coast of Florida.
Windway aircraft and pilots have also flown countless missions to identify crane roosting and nesting sites, locate and track migrating birds, and transfer eggs and chicks to propagation facilities, including the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
The Kohlers have also provided substantial funding to the whooping crane reintroduction effort in the form of matching grants, and they donated ultralight aircraft for the project and purchased a hangar for them. As a result of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership’s efforts, there are 56 migrating whooping cranes in eastern North America, where just six years ago there were none.
The Kohlers have also made important contributions to international crane conservation, making a record-breaking around-the-world flight to deliver Siberian crane eggs from Wisconsin to Russia. The Siberian crane is one of the world’s most endangered birds and a priority species for international conservation.
Among their other contributions to bird conservation in the United States, the Kohlers personally made ten flights to transport imperiled trumpeter swan eggs from Alaska to a captive breeding program at the Milwaukee Zoo. With the Kohlers’ help, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has successfully reintroduced wild trumpeter swans in that state.
Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership founding members are the International
Crane, Foundation, Operation
Migration, Inc.,Wisconsin Department
of Natural Resources U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, U.S. Geological Survey's
Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and National
Wildlife Health Center, International Whooping Crane Recovery Team, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation,
and the Natural Resources Foundation
of Wisconsin.
Many other flyway states, provinces, private individuals and conservation groups have joined forces with and support WCEP by donating resources, funding and personnel. More than 60 percent of the project’s estimated $1.8 million annual budget comes from private sources in the form of grants, public donations and corporate sponsors.
For more information on the project, its partners and how you can help, visit the WCEP Web site at http://www.bringbackthecranes.org.
Educators and students are encouraged to visit Journey North for information and curriculum materials related to the whooping crane project: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/crane/index.html
-WCEP-
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