On Saturday 9th August, GMIA representatives visited WWT Slimbridge’s Crane School in Gloucestershire, UK, accompanied by WWT’s aviculture manager Nigel Jarrett.
 The wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) is a leading UK conservation organization saving wetlands for wildlife and people across the world. It was founded in 1946 by the naturalist and artist Sir Peter Scott. The vision of WWT is quite similar with our GMIA’s, which is building a worldwide network of healthy, productive wetlands, where a rich variety of wildlife can live and breed safely, and ensure people’s lives are enriched by learning about and being close to nature. What’s more, WWT Slimbridge’s Crane School was launched on 20th of June 2007. WWT visited the nests of wild cranes breeding in Asia and Europe and also removed the second laid eggs that are unlikely to produce chicks that will survive and brought them back into crane school. Once hatched, the chicks will be reared by costumed caretakers. WWT plans to hatch, rear and release 20 birds a year for five years. GMIA believe that the visit to Slimbridge Crane School helps to deepen mutual understanding and enhance overall collaboration. We can also learn from WWT for its invaluable experiences which include hatching, rearing, exercising needs of the young cranes and releasing, which have significant influence on GMIA’s challenging mission of conserving Hooded Cranes in China.
 Nigel led the representatives from GMIA to tour the breeding base of baby cranes. The base was within a fox-proof enclosure and separated into two parts: marsh garden for baby cranes’ activity area and a chamber for holding them and keeping them apart to avoid their rivalry behavior. All visitors have to wear a special costume which looks like a big, loose white sheet covering all over the body and a white hood covering the head. The reason is that cranes are easy to imprint themselves on the first creatures they see, so it’s vital that those chicks don’t get used to human in their early weeks. The chicks will also be surrounded by plaster cast crane models in brooding position, crane heads dangling into water dishes and will have appropriate crane calls played to them, to get used to being part of a real crane family.
 What’s more, Nigel introduced us the origins of baby cranes, their common behaviors and different personalities. Later, we visited the breeding base for adult cranes where the marsh garden is more spacious than that of the baby cranes. The personalities of adult cranes are more vivid than those of the baby cranes. They are so elegant, confident, and romantic. We are all positively impressed by these birds with human-like poise, gait, powerful voice and relationship with each other. There is one couple inside whose intimate relationship impressed all of us.
We hope this is the first step of a long-term fruitful collaboration and exchange between WWT Slimbridge’s Crane School and Grus Monacha International Aid’s Hooded Crane Project.
GMIA reporter: Yanna Wei |
