The Whooping Crane

"An oddly assorted lot of champions have labored--often at cross purposes--to save [the whooping crane] from extinction. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service turned the crane's wintering ground into a refuge, and joined forces with the National Audubon Society to find ways and means to save him. Zoo superintendent George Douglass was often accused of trying to corner the captive crane market. The cranes' best friend, Robert Allen, pursued the birds in helicopters, stalked them through salt marshes, tracked them to their secret nesting place in Canada, and tried to clear the flyway of snipers so the tiny flock could migrate without casualties in transit. Hopes for raising cranes in captivity were pinned on Josephine and her mate Crip. 52 eggs and 4 chicks later hopes were dashed when two of the chicks, George and Georgette, had to be renamed George I and George II. Behind this are other grim statistics. Though the wild whooping crane population at Aransas has increased from a low of 14 in 1939 to a high of 44 in 1965, the bird could be wiped out overnight, as swiftly and irrevocably as the passenger pigeon." --Dust jacket.