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Demoiselle Crane by Otto Pfister Oriental Bird Club

Cranes depend on wetlands. With seven of the fifteen crane species threatened and endangered and with the other eight declining rapidly, the Wild Bird Society of Japan (WBSJ) decided to try to conserve fragile wetlands for cranes and other migratory birds.

Since Fall migration of cranes had been witnessed only rarely, the society wanted to locate the Fall and Spring migratory routes used by the birds because that information would reveal the importance of wetlands.

In addition to the routes flown, WBSJ particularly wanted to identify stopover areas and resting sites, known as staging sites, and wintering-over sites.

To map the birds' fall trek through Tibet, the Himalayas and other areas of central and south Asia, WBSJ started working in 1991 with national and international research institutes, such as the International Crane Foundation and Japan's Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, to track cranes by satellite.

Lightweight satellite transmitters were attached to a handful of migratory Demoiselle Cranes. As the birds moved across the globe, signals emitted from those transmitters carried encoded data about their travel habits up to NOAA weather satellites orbiting overhead.

Data extracted from those radio signals was downlinked to ground stations in France and the United States. The information included the latitude and longitude location of a bird along with air pressure and temperature where the bird was located. The migratory bird's location could be determined, no matter where the bird was on the planet. The data was sent on to scientists via computer communication.

Flying through Tibet and the Himalayas

From July to September 1995, the researchers harnessed 21 Demoiselle Cranes with satellite transmitters. Nine were outfitted in Mongolia, a country in east-central Asia. Two received transmitters in Kazakhstan, a region of southern Asia northeast of the Caspian Sea. Ten had transmitters attached in Daursky.

Two Demoiselle Cranes were tracked successfully from Mongolia to India. Those birds avoided passing through the Taklimakan Shamo desert and staged at wetlands along the edge of the Shamo. That reinforced the view that wetlands are important in bird migration

In October 1995, WBSJ research teams in Nepal and India used satellite data to observe the migration at Jomson of more than twenty thousand Demoiselle Cranes over Dhaulagili Mt. and Annapurna Mt. The cranes were flying at an astonishing height of 20,000 feet above sea level. In India, the team found one of the cranes with a satellite transmitter stopping over at a wetland in Rajasthan State.

The satellite tracking project was organized by the Wild Bird Society of Japan and the Yomiuri Shimbun, sponsored by NEC Corporation, and supported by Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japan Environment Agency.

SOURCES: Wild Bird Society of Japan, Oriental Bird Club, International Crane Foundation, Kazakhstan-Central Asian Zoological Society, Mongolian Ornithological Foundation, Japan Environment Agency, Daursky Nature Reserve of Russia, Mongolian National University - Hovd, Saitama Children's Zoo - Japan, Tama Zoological Park -Tokyo, Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Worldwide Fund for Nature - Russia, NEC Corporation, Applied Biology Co. Ltd., NTT Wireless Systems Laboratory, Toyo Communication Equipment Co., Unitika Ltd. Research & Development Center, Yamashina Institute for Ornithology - Japan, and Space Satellite Handbook.

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