Chasing the Ghost Birds: Saving Swans and Cranes from Extinction, a Book by David Sakrison

Chasing the Ghost Birds tells the inside story of three major conservation projects:

--Bringing trumpeter swans back to Wisconsin and the Midwest after an absence of more than 100 years;

--A last-ditch effort to save Russia's threatened Siberian cranes; and

--Saving whooping cranes from the very brink of extinction.

Mary and Terry Kohler have been involved in these projects for 20 years, flying their company jet to Alaska to fetch trumpeter swan eggs for the Wisconsin DNR, to Northern Canada to fetch whooping crane eggs for the International Crane Foundation (ICF) at Baraboo, Wisconsin, and across Russia and Siberia to deliver precious Siberian crane eggs from ICF to Russian ornithologists. Corporate pilots from Terry Kohler's Windway Capital Corp. have spent thousands of hours radio-tracking migrating cranes.

The whooping crane migration project captured national attention earlier this year when a Florida storm killed 17 of 18 young "whoopers" that had just followed an ultralight aircraft from Wisconsin to Florida on their first migration. Chasing the Ghost Birds tells whoopers' story from the 1940's when there were fewer than 20 wild whooping cranes on earth, through struggles to breed the birds in captivity and early migration experiments in Idaho and New Mexico, up to the ongoing Wisconsin-to-Florida ultralight-led migrations. It traces the trumpeter swans' return, from early efforts at cross-fostering to successful reintroduction in the Midwest Flyway. And it details the 30-year international struggle to save the elusive Siberian cranes.

Tom Stehn, the Whooping Crane Coordinator for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, calls Chasing the Ghost Birds, "a thorough, accurate, and engaging account of how species can make a comeback." No other book, no other single source has described any of these three conservation projects in such scope and detail.

The 312-page paperback includes illustrations, maps, and black & white and color photographs. If your interests include birds, wildlife, conservation, wilderness travel, or outdoor adventures, Chasing the Ghost Birds should be on your reading list.

Author David Sakrison, who lives in Ripon, Wisconsin, spent two years researching the book and interviewing the participants-biologists, conservationists, aviculturists, pilots, benefactors, and volunteers-to create a fine, detailed, behind-the-scenes look at these magnificent birds and the many people who are striving to protect them. George Archibald, co-founder of the International Crane Foundation, calls the book, "a remarkable chronicle" told with "balance, accuracy, and lucid detail."

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