{"id":14523,"date":"2012-04-22T00:05:29","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T07:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=14523"},"modified":"2012-04-22T00:05:29","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T07:05:29","slug":"spirits-lifted-by-a-crane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/14523","title":{"rendered":"spirits lifted by a crane"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tA recent visit to the blog of my biologist buddy Jennifer Bov\u00e9<\/a> piqued my interest in whooping cranes.<\/p>\n

Throughout the past year, these big, beautiful endangered birds have created quite a buzz among environmentalists, landowners, and\u2014believe it or not\u2014the Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA).<\/p>\n

Let’s just say, feathers were ruffled …\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

The cranes didn’t mean to make trouble. They were simply learning a primal lesson in geography by means of an age-old avian undertaking: migration.<\/p>\n

The twist on this airborne adventure was the addition of an ultralight aircraft piloted by people from Operation Migration<\/a>, a non-profit organization committed to whooping crane conservation. If you’ve ever seen the movie Fly Away Home<\/em><\/a>, you get the idea (those were Canada geese in the movie, but it’s a similar sort of effort).<\/p>\n

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Theatrical poster for Fly Away Home. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. IMP Awards<\/p><\/div>\n

Operation Migration wants to re-establish a flyway for whooping cranes, which disappeared from the eastern U.S. in the 1800s.<\/p>\n

The method is marvelously madcap:<\/p>\n