Cranes as rural renaissance

No, not the construction cranes that too often make real estate developers and urban economic development practitioners or planners happy. I'm talking about sandhill cranes.

sandhill cranes in a marshy meadow

Photo by J. Harrington

Almost every day for the past week we've seen several adults, sometimes with colts [young sandhill cranes], in the fields we drive past. These sitings have been some of the high points of the week. Sandhill cranes are one of the things Minnesota and the Midwest do moderately well that Massachusetts and the rest of New England don't do at all, much to the chagrin of this native New Englander.

According to the Audubon folks, if we humans somehow manage to limit climate breakdown to 1.5℃ most of the crane's habitat in Western Minnesota will be lost. if, as seems increasingly more likely, climate breakdown leads to an increase of 3℃, almost all of the crane's range in Minnesota will be lost. That would return the county in which I live, Chisago, to the same number of breeding sandhill cranes that were observed during the late 1970's, ZERO! [see p. 5 in the linked report] For those of us who enjoy seeing and watching wildlife, that would be a significant loss of amenity (as the real estate agents say).

“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.”

― Aldo Leopold

Consider rural development in the twenty-first century. Attractive natural surroundings with lots of opportunities for observing birds like sandhill cranes, plus opportunities for outdoor recreation such as hunting, fishing, or pleasure riding (horses, bikes, ATVs) represent part of a "amenity" package urban areas just can't offer.

I think I first became aware of sandhill cranes many years ago during my initial reading of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. In fact, in one of the chapters of the Almanac, Leopold seems to anticipate a potential role for the cranes as part of a rural renaissance.

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins as in art with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words.” Marshland Elegy, A Sand County Almanac.

Cranes in August

By Kim Addonizio

They clutter the house,
awkwardly folded, unable
to rise. My daughter makes
and makes them, having heard
the old story: what we create
may save us. I string
a long line of them over
the window. Outside
the gray doves bring
their one vowel to the air,
the same sound
from many throats, repeated.

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