Mar 21 (nytimes.com) - Conservators vastly increased the numbers of red-crowned cranes, a symbol of loyalty and longevity in Japanese culture. That’s just a start.
The dance of the red-crowned cranes commenced, an impromptu pas de deux.
The pair approached each other with a bow. They crossed back and forth, gliding up into the air and returning to earth with the effortless grace of parachutes. In a dramatic flourish, they spread their pristine white and jet-black wings wide and tilted their beaks to the arc of blue sky above.
As this elegant courtship ritual unfolded, Kazuhiko Yamazaki, a vegetable farmer, drove a large red tractor onto a snow-covered field on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. From a green rotating funnel he dispensed about 40 pounds of corn to more than 50 red-crowned cranes, a bird revered in Japan as a symbol of loyalty and longevity.
Just over half a century ago, when Mr. Yamazaki’s grandfather started sprinkling corn kernels from a metal bucket onto that same field, only about three dozen red-crowned cranes were left in all of Japan. But thanks to a decades-long effort led by local conservators and subsidized by the Japanese government, the number of red-crowned cranes in Mr. Yamazaki’s town, Kushiro, has swelled to about 1,900.
Last year, the bird — which appeared on the 1,000-yen note for nearly a quarter-century, serves as the logo of Japan Airlines and regularly features in artistic scrolls and New Year’s greeting cards — was reclassified as “vulnerable” from “endangered” by a worldwide conservation group. The new designation signals that the cranes are no longer at imminent risk of extinction. ...continue reading
