At 79, the world’s leading crane conservationist has no plans to slow down — or miss March in Nebraska

ALDA — The world’s largest gathering of cranes draws people from around the world to south-central Nebraska each March.

Some simply enjoy watching sandhill cranes dance in cornfields and on river sandbars. Some listen to the chorus of purrs, ticks and woots. 

More serious “birders” hope to glimpse a flash of bright white amid all the gray feathers — confirmation that endangered whooping cranes have joined the sandhill flocks.

But of the tens of thousands of human visitors who flock to Nebraska each year, few, if any, know the sights and sounds as well as George Archibald. The 79-year-old co-founder of the International Crane Foundation has come to Nebraska nearly every year since 1975 to take in one of Earth’s greatest migrational events. 

He has spent the past month here, an unusually long stay for the globe-trotting Archibald, who has dedicated more than a half-century to observing, studying, protecting and even dancing with the world’s cranes — all 15 species of them.

He understands their behaviors, habitats, history and what their futures may hold.

Archibald’s childhood interest in birds and first encounter with a sandhill crane blossomed into a lifelong mission after he met another crane-crazy 20-something, Ron Sauey, in 1971 at Cornell University. 

Two years later, they founded the International Crane Foundation with the goal of saving cranes and their habitats. That two-man operation, originally headquartered in a horse barn on Sauey’s family farm in Wisconsin, has grown into an international conservation powerhouse, with 176 employees and offices in China, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Texas, along with the current 300-acre headquarters also near Baraboo, Wisconsin. Archibald still serves as the foundation’s senior conservationist.

Despite his standing in the world of conservation, Archibald is happiest when he is around cranes. That makes his March visits to Nebraska, the Central Flyway midmigration stop for a million or so sandhill cranes, especially joyful occasions.

“When I travel around the world and meet cranes and hear their calls, I feel like they’re greeting me like an old friend,” he said. “When I hear the first crane of spring near my house, I’m overjoyed.”

Pre-med to saving cranes

Archibald was a bird-loving kid who bred waterfowl, pheasants and chickens at his family’s home in rural coastal Nova Scotia. His parents were educators, though Mom stopped teaching to raise six children.

An early influence was Aldo Leopold’s 1948 book “A Sand County Almanac,” especially the “Marshland Elegy” essay set near the Baraboo Hills. “And it was inspired by just two sandhill cranes he saw leaving a marsh on a hazy morning,” Archibald said.

The book sparked a revelation. “It’s like the Earth is my home and I want to take care of my home,” he said.

Archibald remained interested in birds as he grew older, but didn’t think he could make a living that way. So he attended Dalhousie University in Halifax with plans to eventually become a pediatrician. He even had a full-ride government scholarship to medical school.

“Cranes were my hobby interest,” Archibald said. It was enhanced during his undergrad summers of 1966 and 1967, when he was an Alberta Game Farm bird caretaker and first saw a sandhill crane.

“It was a beautiful spring day and I walked into a paddock. There was a sandhill crane that was imprinted on people. I saw the orange eyes and it danced. He was beautiful.”

Then in 1967, in search of fun, Archibald traveled to Ithaca, New York, to see Cornell’s renown ornithology lab.

“I loved birds, so why not,” he said.

He walked into the Cornell building, heard the sound of birds and entered a room full of parrots. As he walked around, Archibald noticed another door. Inside, he found the man who would soon become his mentor: Professor William Bilger.

Bilger talked about Cornell’s bird research. Archibald shared his observations about cranes. “It was a meeting of the minds,” Archibald said.

Bilger encouraged him to study cranes at Cornell. “I told him that’s exactly what I want to do. It wasn’t about a degree, it was about the cranes,” Archibald said. He enrolled in 1968 to start working on an ecology-related Ph.D.

As Archibald was completing his degree, he met Sauey, who was just starting his doctorate degree with a focus on behaviors of Siberian cranes in winter.

“I overheard Ron say he was from Wisconsin and I’d never been there,” Archibald said. “I asked if he was familiar with Aldo Leopold. It was like asking a priest if he knew about the pope.”

As Sauey continued his studies, Archibald traveled to Japan and other countries to observe cranes in the wild for his dissertation.

“Studying crane behaviors was fun, but I had to do something for conservation,” he said. He and co-founder Sauey worked together on their shared mission until 1987, when Sauey died.

“I had no idea where I’d be today,” Archibald said. “But I’m a Christian, and I hope a devoted one, so I put each day in the hands of a higher power. I’m surprised, but thrilled.”

Is crane watching a spiritual experience? “All of life has a spiritual sense,” he said.

Cranes today

The International Crane Foundation headquarters has a captive flock of approximately 100 cranes. It’s the only place in the world with a complete collection of all 15 species in the crane family Gruidae.

Archibald’s favorite species? “The one I’m looking at,” he said recently from the Crane Trust headquarters southwest of Grand Island.

That means whooping and sandhill cranes in March. He likes whooping cranes for their beauty and rarity. 

Sandhill cranes, on the other hand, are very successful birds that have interesting responses to a variety of circumstances, he said. “They paint their feathers with mud so they’re harder to see by predators.”

All of the world’s cranes face survival challenges: habitat loss from climate change and development; pollution; bird flu and other pathogens; and invasive species. Politics and shifting funding priorities threaten efforts to save the cranes.

That’s what makes the International Crane Foundation’s partnerships with local organizations so important. In Nebraska, that includes Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary, the Crane Trust, The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Rainwater Basin and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.

Nebraska’s two busiest crane-related sites started within five years of Archibald’s organization.

The first land for Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary southwest of Gibbon was purchased in 1974. Today, it has 3,000 acres, five miles of river channel and a recently expanded visitor and education center.

The Crane Trust was established in 1978 as part of a court-approved settlement of Platte River Basin water-use issues related to construction of Grayrocks Dam on a Wyoming tributary.  

Today, the Crane Trust owns or has conservation easements on nearly 10,000 acres of tallgrass prairie and wetlands — more than half riverfront — and a nature and visitor center at Interstate 80’s Alda exit.

A life with cranes

Archibald has come to the Platte River in Nebraska every March since 1975, except during COVID in 2021. He usually stays a day or two, but this year he invited International Crane Foundation members. “This is the first time I’ve stayed for a month,” he said.

Archibald’s crane-crazy friends in Nebraska and around the world include conservation photographer Michael Forsberg of Lincoln. “I first met him on the Platte at Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary during crane migration in 1998 … We became fast friends back then and remain so today,” Forsberg said.

The International Crane Foundation helped Forsberg self-publish two books, “On Ancient Wings: The Sandhill Cranes of North America” in 2004 and “Into Whooperland: A Photographer’s Journey with Whooping Cranes” in 2024.

“George has the uncanny ability to be just as comfortable talking cranes with a group of farmers at coffee as he does at some fancy dinner with dignitaries and heads of state,” he said. “And when he does, they listen.”

Another friend was the late Jane Goodall. She and Archibald would meet in Nebraska during crane season and in foreign countries when they happened to be there at the same time. They were introduced by their common friend, wildlife photographer and Nebraska native Tom Mangelsen.

Archibald often shares a quote from the late Nebraska ornithologist Paul Johnsgard. “It went something like ‘There’s a special magic when spring, the sandhill cranes and the river all meet in Nebraska.’”

Archibald has a message for Nebraskans who see sandhill cranes during their daily lives but have never stopped for a good look. “You have one of the world’s great migration spectacles that people from all over the world come to see … The (Platte) river is the most important part.”

He intends to keep seeing and protecting that spectacle for as long as he can. “I’m never going to retire unless mentally or physically I cannot do what I do,” Archibald said. “I love what I do.”