Contact: Jamie Johannsen, Four Rivers Environmental Coalition, Phone: 877-6100

Young whooping cranes will soon be following an ultralight airplane through the region and Joe Duff, cofounder and Lead Pilot with Operation Migration, will tell the story of restoring whooping crane migration routes Thursday evening.

Duff’s talk is scheduled for Thursday, October 19, 2006 at 7 p.m. at Burpee Museum, 737 N. Main St in Rockford. The free program is hosted by the Four Rivers Environmental Coalition. Light refreshents will be served. Free will donations for this important project are appreciated.

Operation Migration is doing vital work to help save the endangered cranes.

Like many birds, whooping cranes learn migration routes by following their parents. But this knowledge is lost when the species is reduced and there are no longer any wild birds using the flyway.

Duff and OM co-founder, Bill Lishman, proved that birds could be trained to follow ultralight airplanes. In 1993 they used two ultralights to lead 18 Canada geese from Ontario to Virginia. The success of this initial study led to the founding of Operation Migration the following year, and the making of “Fly Away Home” in 1995.

That same year Duff led Sandhill cranes in flights around southern Ontario, as well as leading 60 geese to South Carolina with Lishman and the OM crew. Then they turned their attention to whooping cranes, the world’s most endangered cranes. Until Operation Migration was asked by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to spearhead a reintroduction of the world’s most endangered cranes – at one time population fell to 15 birds — there was no method of teaching migration to captive reared whooping cranes once they were released into the wild. During the first five years of the program, approximately 60 birds have been taught a migration route between Wisconsin and Florida.

Duff has developed a keen interest in the science of migration and crane behavior, and no doubt has accumulated more hours in flight alongside more species of birds than any other human. Recently, Duff led a team of pilots that conducted an aerial survey in search of the elusive Ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas and Louisiana . His aircraft will go on permanent display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum beginning in 2006.