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KUSHIRO, Japan – The dance of the red-crowned cranes begins with an impromptu pas de deux.
The two approached, bowing to each other. They glided back and forth, soaring into the air, and back to earth with the effortless grace of parachutes. In a dramatic display, they spread their pristine white and jet black wings wide open and bent their beaks into the arc of the blue sky above.
As this graceful courtship ritual unfolded, Kazuhiko Yamazaki, a vegetable farmer, drove a large red tractor into a snow-covered field on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. From a green spinning funnel, he distributed about 40 pounds of corn to more than 50 red-crowned cranes, a bird revered in Japan as a symbol of loyalty and longevity.
A little over half a century ago, only three dozen red-crowned cranes remained in all of Japan when Mr. Yamazaki’s grandfather began sprinkling corn kernels from a metal bucket in the same field. However, thanks to a decades-long effort led by local guardians and supported by the Japanese government, the number of red-crowned cranes in Mr. Yamazaki’s town of Kushiro has risen to nearly 1,900.
Last year, the bird, which has appeared on the 1,000-yen note for nearly a quarter of a century, serves as Japan Airlines’ logo, and appears regularly on artistic scrolls and New Year’s greeting cards, was reclassified as “”.sensitivean “endangered” worldwide conservation group. The new designation signals that the cranes are no longer in danger of extinction.
Some ornithologists question whether the species can be declared safe, given that its native population in China is still deeply threatened and the Japanese population relies almost entirely on human diet. Across Asia, climate change is disrupting the wetlands where cranes find food, nest and raise their young.
Scientists are worried that a disease outbreak in Kushiro could wipe out the region’s high density of pike. A managed plan to reduce artificial feeding has driven many of the birds to local farms, in some cases damaging animal feed supplies and making other communities wary of hosting large numbers of cranes.
“In some ways, we’ve been extremely successful,” said Osamu Harada, head ranger of a crane shelter in Tsurui, a village in the Kushiro prefecture, where a branch of the Japan Wild Birds Association feeds hundreds of cranes twice a day.
“Our first step in conservation was just to increase the number,” Mr. Harada added. “But the second step is to think about how we can help them live on their own in nature.”
Kushiro residents have a self-seeking reason to protect the cranes: They’re a major tourist attraction. Before the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of visitors from Asia, Europe and the rest of the United States traveled to Hokkaido to study and photograph the birds.
even in japan still closed to international touristsRecently, a feed attracted a group of native bird watchers to the Tsurui temple. Equipped with massive telephoto lenses, the cameras provided a soundtrack of quick shutter clicks as snow fell silently around the dancing cranes.
“If the cranes disappeared from Tsurui village, that would be a big problem,” said third-generation inn owner and photo tour guide Masahiro Wada, 66, who recently opened a gallery of framed prints of his crane paintings. walls, some asking for prices close to $1,200.
Records show that red-crowned cranes, named for the shimmering red skin discs on the heads of adult birds, were abundant in Japan during the Edo period from the 17th to the 19th centuries. At that time cranes were kept as pets for the shoguns who ruled the realm, and were also prepared as culinary delights.
In the second half of the 19th century, locals began to hunt red-crowned cranes aggressively, and in the 20th century, construction and agriculture destroyed their wetland habitat. By the 1920s, there were fears that the cranes were extinct until a handful of surviving cranes were discovered in a large swamp in Kushiro.
The Japanese government began enacting laws banning the hunting of red-crowned cranes and restricting development in breeding areas. The Ministry of Culture designated the birds as a natural monument in 1935.
Mr. Yamazaki’s grandfather, Sadajiro Yamazaki, was the first local resident to purposely feed red-crowned cranes after seeing a few nibbles on corn originally intended for dairy cows. In 1952, when students at an elementary school in Tsurui began sprinkling corn next to a playground every morning, a community effort to save cranes is a ritual that continues to this day.
In the early 1980s, Japan’s ministry of the environment was funding local groups that managed regular feeding, and the Hokkaido government offered subsidies to individual landowners.
According to 75-year-old Sayoko Takahashi, the birds have become an indelible part of everyday life after her and her husband have been reared in the backyard for 25 years. Every afternoon, dozens of cranes arrive to wait for Ms. Takahashi, who is dragging a children’s snow sled carrying two large corn buckets.
Sometimes cranes linger outside the house, peering through the window in their living room – especially when they play the music of fiery Japanese ballad singers. “I joke that I can’t go anywhere because of them,” she said. “But I’m worried if they don’t come.”
She worries that no one will look after them after she left with her husband, who suffered a stroke last year. None of her three grown daughters showed any interest.
Experts are working to ensure the cranes survive any threats, including the avian flu epidemic. The zoo and sanctuaries in Kushiro keep about 35 rescued cranes – some of whom spend their days pacing back and forth in small cells – in captivity in case an artificial breeding program is needed to replenish the population. Researchers freeze the bodies and organs of dead cranes to study and preserve their DNA.
The biggest focus, however, is a plan to move cranes away from organized bait and disperse them toward more natural food sources in Hokkaido’s swamps and rivers – a process that officials say could take a decade.
“This is challenge #1,” said Kunikazu Momose, president of the Red-Crowned Crane Conservation Society in Hokkaido. “We have to train these cranes to be more ferocious.”
In 2015, the Ministry of Environment started to cut down on daily feed amounts. The cranes then invaded local farms and helped themselves with corn feed designed for dairy cows or beef cattle.
Last year, Arata Oikawa, a dairy farmer in Tsurui, spilled 300 tons of corn silage instead of 10 million yen, or about $85,000, after pecking and causing dozens of red-crowned cranberry-covered tarps. mold
“They are beautiful birds,” said Mr. Oikawa, 47, “but when I think of them in relation to my work, I don’t like them very much.”
Some local farmers have learned to live with their bird neighbors, but other communities are wary of hauling too many cranes.
In Naganuma, a town in western Hokkaido where cranes started appearing a few years ago, officials and farmers say they want to avoid a large bird influx. “Our hope is not that many of them come to the area,” said Yoshikazu Kato, director of a local association that aims to “bring back” the red-crowned cranes.
Tamizo Nakamoto, 75, who moved to the Kushiro area from Osaka nearly three decades ago with his wife, 75-year-old Akiko, said “the worst thing for a crane environment is people.”
The couple developed a custom crane shelter on their 25-acre property, dug wells to create ponds, and spent half their pension on corn and frozen coke, and fed three crane pairs that returned each year and produced 60 chicks.
One afternoon recently, Mr. Nakamoto carried a metal container filled with fragrance to one of the ponds in front of the couple’s modest home. He started waving his arms when he saw a pair of cranes. One of the cranes responded by flapping its wings.
For a moment it seemed as if the human and bird were dancing with each other.
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