In this episode of NDO Podcast, Ron Wilson, North Dakota Outdoors editor, steps in as co-host to visit with Mike Forsberg, conservation photographer, and Andy Caven, habitat ecologist, on a rest stop in Bismarck along their 2,500 mile journey to pedal the whooping crane migration route from Texas to Saskatchewan.
Cayla: Welcome to episode 102 of the NDO podcast. On this episode, Casey is gone somewhere again, cool, I think he's camping with the family. But we have Ron Wilson, ND Outdoors editor, back on with us to co-host. And this episode, we have Mike Forsberg and Andy Caven with us. They are pedaling the whooper highway, so they are pedaling the migration route of the whooping crane. Started back in May down in Texas and headed all the way to Saskatchewan. But today they're with us in Bismarck on a rainy off day under a picnic pavilion. Yeah. So we're gonna have them on we'll hear a little bit about their journey, a little bit about whooping cranes, I'm sure. And yeah, they've already promised not to kill each other. So that's, that's a good thing. Yeah. Mike, we'll start with you just a little bit of your background and I don't know how you got into this long bike ride journey.
Mike: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Nice to be here. Born and raised in Nebraska. So I've lived in the Great Plains most of my life and I've been working as a conservation photographer, writer, storyteller, etc. for about the last 30 years. So got a couple kids, married and fell in love with cranes at a very formative age of about 16 or 17. I've never been able to let them go. So the latest iteration is, for some crazy reason, biking with this dude named Andy Caven up the of what we call the whooper highway from Texas to northern Canada following their migration path.
Cayla: Very cool. Andy.
Andy: Yeah. My name is Andy Caven. I consider myself a habitat ecologist. I like figuring out what species need. And I used to work a lot in long-term research and monitoring. And I worked for the Park Service inventory and monitoring program and others before finding my way into the crane world. They hired me to do like long-term habitat assessments along the Platte River for an organization called the Crane Trust. And that's where I met Mike. And the crane community has adopted me. And I'm a fully-fledged crane at this point. And now I work for the International Crane Foundation as their director of Central Flyway Programs, which is a new program to work in this critical flyway, this central flyway, which the whooping crane migration corridor follows. So, you know, it's a great way to launch a program and make sure I understand every inch of this flyway.
Ron: Mike, did you have to search very hard to find someone to ride with you?
Cayla: Yeah. Whose idea was this?
Ron: Yeah.
Mike: Well, I would argue that at its base, it was Andy's idea.
Ron: Oh. Okay.
Mike: But he always throws it back and say it was our idea. I still think it was Andy's, I think. But, you know, we the decision to do this from the time that we decided to do it and the time that we're doing it is very short. It was just a few months ago that we decided to.
Cayla: Oh wow. I would have thought this would have taken months and months of planning years maybe, but and training.
Andy: It could have, it could have. I mean, you know, we talked about it earlier than that, but it was about pulling the trigger.
Cayla: Yeah.
Andy: You know, and getting all the things lined up to make sure we could do it. And we really did pull the logistics off in just a few months. You know, the route started with 44 important anchor points that that are important stops for whooping cranes along their migration. And we had a team that looked at it. You know, I made the first draft. Everybody corrected it and filled it in. And you know, then we kind of started biking. You know, but yeah, we, we both exercise regularly. But, you know, the training for this, I’d actually been training for, for marathon, which was good, which I'd run, but biking was my off-day exercise. The three weeks before this trip, I was biking every day. But, you know, it was we both, we both got it in the face a little bit in the first couple of weeks. But I think our bodies adjusted, you know, now we're going pretty good. Now we're starting to wear down. We're on the other end of it.
Mike: Yeah, we're on the other end. That's for sure. But yeah, I don't think you can train for something like this.
Cayla: You just don't know how you did. Yeah.
Mike: Yeah.
Ron: Has there been any time in this trip you're going, maybe we bit off more than we can chew in terms of the riding?
Andy: Oh, every day for me.
Cayla: How many miles do you usually ride? I should have looked at the detailed route, but.
Mike: We like to target around 60.
Cayla: Okay.
Mike: A day. And sometimes we do more than that. Sometimes we do less than that. And there's, there's a million things that happen every day that, you know, some that we anticipate and some that we don't. The day takes us where it wants us to go, I think.
Cayla: That's probably how the cranes feel, right? Yeah. Yeah. They don't have a plan do they. Just the day takes them where they.
Mike: That's been the beauty of it in a way, is one of the things that you learn real quickly is that, you know, you are. There's a lot of analogies you can draw, you know, on a trip like this, but one of them is just, you know, that you're making the same decisions that the birds are.
Cayla: Well, you're probably not biking backwards at all though.
Mike: No, no, and that's correct.
Cayla: Yeah.
Mike: And you're also not, you know, we, we pedal into headwinds because we are on somewhat of a time clock.
Cayla: Yeah, yeah.
Mike: Cranes don't. They're not going to do that. Yeah. But all the other stuff, you know, how far are you going to go. Where are you going to eat. Where are you going to sleep? That sort of stuff. Those are daily decisions.
Ron: Well, you're seeing the you're seeing the country from a different perspective. You know, from a bicycle seat different from a van. I mean, that's got to be impressive along the way.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, both Andy and I are from the Great Plains, and we spent a tremendous amount of time in this giant geography. For me at least, most of it has been spent where I, you know, I get in my truck and I drive somewhere, and then I get out and go do my thing, whether or not that's for an hour or a day or a couple of weeks by going on a bike A) you're slowed down, you don't have windows to roll down or roll up, you're in it. So you are completely visually, you're completely stimulated. But then it's not just what you see, but it's what you hear. It's not just what you hear, but what you smell, what you taste, even if you're eating enough bugs along the way. You know, it's a completely different, visceral kind of experience that I never. That was a surprising thing to me was how on that was, you know.
Ron: So you start this project, jump in the saddle, start pedaling. What did you want to accomplish? What's your goal at the end here?
Andy: I've tried to boil it down into a few, few key points, you know. One was, was to, to experience and see, you know, every inch of the center of the whooping crane migration corridor and to assess its condition and to tell the story of that landscape the best we can, and also to try to empathize with and experience migration, you know, with the whooping cranes as our inspiration, you know, because to feel the weight between the wetlands that we ride and between the grasses that we ride. And maybe think like a whooping crane. Think like a sparrow, think like a monarch. You know the best we can, you know, because it's, it's hard to get people out of our everyday experiences. You know, we're busy. We're running to the office, thinking about making dinner, thinking about getting the kids here, there and you know, slowing down and trying to, trying to empathize with and understand what this landscape is experienced like to another creature is a really interesting experience. We hope we can translate that to a, to a human audience, you know, to our friends and our family. And, you know, it's, it's heady and it's a little hard, but, you know, seemed worth doing.
Cayla: For sure. The, can you guys just speak a little bit to the actual, like, so when would they have actually left? The cranes like the Texas coast.
Mike: They leave, yeah, we're well behind them. Yeah, we're like a water skier. Right in the wake of the boat, right? So typically, they leave any, you know, in March, mid-March to mid-April. You may have stragglers on the back end and a few early runners, but generally we're, we're following behind, but we are following in the path of and in a lot of cases, with the whooping crane tracking partnership that we work with, you know, we're able to look at past telemetry data to, to show and identify exactly where this migratory corridor is, which is very narrow.
Cayla: Yeah.
Mike: You know, and, and try to always stay in that, in that stream along the way. Now whooping cranes make this trip in the spring from wintering grounds to, to nesting grounds. In what Andy?
Andy: They yeah,
Mike: A month or so, 3 or 4 weeks?
Andy: Yeah. It goes a little quicker in the spring sometimes, you know, than the fall. But it depends, you know, and really they're spending three months a year in migration on average, you know, and with a little more than a month in the spring and in month and a half or so in the fall. But it's not, you know, those early birds, I've seen him get to the Platte River by March 1st. So those birds are leaving mid-February. Those birds are taking their time on migration, you know, and age matters. You know, the younger birds are a little more unpredictable. Family groups are a little more unpredictable heading south. And so, I like to kind of sum it up, say three months of the year in migration, because it could go more, it could go less. You know.
Ron: That's quite the trip from what I understand too is like you're also doing some survey work or some site work or, along the way.
Andy: Yeah, the first grassland or wetland we encounter, we do presence absence survey you know, ten by ten meters. You know, I try not to trespass too much. So there's a fair number of roadsides in there, but wildlife management areas are a slam dunk because I can walk right in the middle. I get excited about that and list all the plants fruiting and flowering we can identify. And then we do a ten-minute point count for birds and, you know, been tallying that data per day, you know, and then while we're riding, we keep track of any incidentals we didn't get on the survey. So we have a relatively complete list for the day, which is a mental exercise I find myself riding. We tend to ride in these ten-mile segments, and I'll be repeating bird names and plant names like a mantra as I'm riding so I can hold on to them. You know, it'll be Swamp sparrow, Marsh Wren, gadwall. And I'll be really smart. I'll say it over and over as I'm riding so I don't forget it, you know? And but it's been, it's been a great way to have all our senses on. Right? We, neither of us have really listened to music. There's one day winds were 30 miles an hour. I turned on music, but otherwise it's been listening to birds and looking for birds and smelling the landscape and trying to read it and make sense of it. So it's been really as, as Mike said, immersive experience with all your senses.
Ron: Well, this trip, when you say you're doing all this stuff, this trip is more than just about the cranes.
Andy: Oh, it's about the flyaway that the cranes are the champion for that they're the umbrella species for as in science. It's been printed a bunch of times. Whooping cranes are an excellent umbrella species, but no one has actually published an article that shows how good of an umbrella species they are. So kind of that's what I hope to do with this flyaway thing is we're going to Mike and I will publish an article together that kind of says, hey, they are pretty good at that.
Ron: Will there be a book Mike?
Mike: I don't know. I, I, you know, as a photographer on this trip, this has been something very different for me because typically I have my, my bag of gear. I'm using my phone. That's it. And I figured, you know, if you got every man here biking the whooper highway like I am, every man better just use a phone, too. It's, you know, the best camera you got is what's in your hand. And so, at the beginning, I was just sort of, I had just resolved to the idea that I was going to take pictures to document the trip, but I didn't have any great expectation about those photographs. I got up early this morning, and I just started thumbing through the last 37 days. And, you know, there's some interesting stuff in there. There's stuff that repeats itself again and again and again. You know, I've been taking pictures of every roadkill bird that I see. Not every one, but the ones that still are, are recognizable. I've been taking portraits of most everybody that we meet. You know, I've been taking pictures of the skies, you know, so you get these, these little chapters, I guess, in this story that have some compartments. Compartment. Compartment. I'm not.
Andy: Mentalization.
Mike: Thank you. This is what we call bike brain.
Cayla: Yes.
Andy: You know, it's real. Yeah.
Mike: But anyway, so maybe I'm sort of intrigued by what that might look like now, you know, wouldn’t be a big lavish coffee table picture book or anything. But, but maybe something that that helps tell this story in a, in another way. So yeah, stay tuned.
Cayla: Did you, did I read on like a social media post or something like 100, how many different plant or bird species I thought you guys had the.
Andy: Well, I'm constantly like a week behind. Yeah, I'm still three days behind. But we're near, we're, we're dang near 350 species of plants and probably 150, 160 species of birds. But, but you know, it was a tipping point really in the Great Plains hitting the Dakotas, where in the southern plains, we were adding more plants where just the plants were outrunning the birds pretty hard. And now that started to tip. Some of that has to do with the condition of some of the prairies. We've had a lot of very invaded brome prairies in South Dakota and some parts of North Dakota. But brome and crested wheatgrass. But also it has to do with the diversity of bird life really kind of blowing up. I mean, you know, especially in those high-quality remnants, we're getting almost every sparrow you can get. You know, we're getting a lot of great shorebirds now breeding shorebirds, whether that's avocets or willets or marbled godwits. And so yeah, we're, we're getting a lot of great birds in the Dakotas and, and now in North Dakota, we've gotten some great prairies and some great birds. So I'm very happy with the hills outside of Bismarck. We're both going on about that because it was a great bike ride, great prairies, and it was great birds.
Cayla: So don't oversell Bismarck too much we gotta...
Andy: You don't want people moving here. Oh, well. that was a cool spot, you know.
Cayla: Where'd you guys leave off yesterday?
Mike: We left off at MacLean Bottoms Wildlife Management Area was our stopping point, which will be our starting point tomorrow. And interestingly enough, It didn't dawn on me until we were actually there that I flew the Whooper Highway in 2022 with my pilot friend Chris Boyer in a small plane. And it took us 18 days and we left the Texas Gulf Coast in April. And this time, you know, we weren't flying along with the whooping cranes, but we were in their path at the same time they were flying. And if you remember, in 2022 historic blizzard here in North Dakota in mid-April. Right. And that just that completely stalled migration for everything, including whooping cranes. So we had a lot of them that were south of the, of the big white wall, but then there were a lot of them that were stuck here. And one of those places was MacLean Bottoms. And we flew into Bismarck airport a few days after the blizzard. And before we got to the airport, we were flying along the Missouri and looked down and we saw roughly 20 or so whooping cranes at MacLean bottoms around these springs that were still keeping a little bit of water open. And so, we ground truth that once we got down off the airplane and went out there and found whooping crane tracks everywhere, and even saw some on some of the ridges that had been blown clean, where they were picking around for waste grain, you know, that were still, still left that they could get at. So it's really cool to be back here now, three years later at a completely different time of year. And I really look forward to our start tomorrow, because I'm going to get to wander around in a place that I've only stepped foot on when there was four feet of snow with drifts to eight, you know?
Cayla: Yeah, that's where they were hanging out this spring too, for a while. A couple of weeks. Yep.
Ron: Andy, you talk a little bit about the habitat, you know, and what's your impression so far? You know, from your start to now or we hear so many, you know, woe is me stories about our habitat across the country. What does it look like?
Andy: Well, I don't want to say woe is me, you know, but that was that was part of it. It kind of was, you know, I mean, the hard part is, you know, like I was just talking with this Jody gal, I just met with the grouse partnership here, and she had the same figures as me, about 2 million acres per year we've been losing in the Great Plains from Saskatchewan down to Texas. And you see that, you know, you see, but you also see some really nice remnants hanging on. You know, if I, I, I've actually been keeping track of the environmental problems per segment as well. And in the southern plains, it's, it's mostly about urban sprawl and shrub encroachment. And as you go north, then it becomes that, you know, these large industrial agricultural expanses where we didn't leave room for prairies and wetlands. And then as you move further north, the invasive species start to become just as problematic as, as the large expanses of, converted land. You know, and that's kind of where we're at now, you know, I do think you know, growing up in South Dakota and always having a basic understanding of sort of landscape stuff just from family and whatever. I knew what brome was since I was a kid. And there's more. There's more brome than there used to be. The smooth brome has really expanded and become, you know, one of the most dominant grasses in the Dakotas, I'd say, arguably be the dominant grass in South Dakota, you know. So it was hard to find a high-quality remnant with, you know, warm season grasses, you know, but we did we found some of those remnants. And where we found them, the bird life was out of this world, you know, but it was on big working ranches or conservation areas, you know, and I think this whole trip has highlighted to me the importance of large working ranches. I believe that anyways, and, and their importance for ecology and, and you know, as, as Mike often says, if it doesn't pay, it doesn't stay. And it's important that, that, you know we have sustainable working lands for generations that includes big grasslands, you know, and, and I don't have, I don't have an answer for you on how to do that. I think people wish I did, but I don't, but I got to see every inch of it and that's been interesting. You know, yeah, there's big expanses, 30-mile rides where we didn't see a prairie or wetland, just wheat. And you know, that's okay. You know, as Mike says, it's breadbasket and energy pump. But we got to think about what we leave behind and where we leave it strategically.
Mike: I think too, about the places where we do have protected areas under conservation and these waterfowl production areas, these wildlife management areas, these federal national wildlife refuges. If we didn't set those aside back in the day, there wouldn't be anything left. There really wouldn't be. You know, this is that's how important that they that they were and that they are now, because you get into the periphery of these places on a trip like Andy and I are taking. And all of a sudden there's all the life. It's just an explosion of life. You know that you can see and hear and those are there's just these string of pearls up and down the, the heart of the continent. And you think about the great plains of North America, you know, million square miles, that geography, if it was its own country, it'd be the 10th largest in the world. There's only 23 million people roughly in the Great Plains of North America. There's 23 million people in the Los Angeles Basin alone. So a lot of folks think that there's nothing out here and there's nobody out here. Neither of those things are true. But it is, you know, one of the most altered landscapes on earth. Like all of our temperate grasslands are because they are the bread baskets and the energy pumps for most of the world today. But, you know, it's, it's time for us to take a, to take a look again. And decide what we want it to be moving forward. And, and that oftentimes has to do with everything, with what people care about, you know, and, and people care a lot about a lot of different things and have their own perspectives. Right. So and I think here in the, in the Great Plains, one thing that we are good at is, is coming down, sitting around the table and talking with each other openly and honestly and respectfully about what our, what we do care about, what our differences are and how we can come together and find common ground.
Cayla: Yeah, I often think like how forward thinking to set aside those places when it wasn't even really a problem yet. But I don't know that that's going to be the solution now that works very well. It seems like definitely working lands, like you've noted, it's going to be.
Andy: Yeah. When they're in combination. Yeah, it's incredible. You know, and just to add to that story, we’re pulling into, you know, that that 30 miles a week was kind of just south of Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. And when we pulled into Quivira, there was a butterfly species of concern that I've done some research on. And Mike knows very well the regal fritillary butterfly, and we didn't see any in Kansas until we got to Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. And it was an eruption. I mean, it was it was a good year for them. And they were there in abundance. And, you know, they were on an island. It was a metapopulation for certain, but they were everywhere. They outnumbered the monarchs. And they might have been the one, probably the most abundant butterfly there. They were they were competing with the sulfurs, you know, and anyway, that's just that tells the story of the value of this eruption of life, as Mike put it. And you know, yeah, we need solutions. And that's kind of been what it's about. And the conversations and listening in rural communities and rural communities need solutions too, which I find is an interesting overlap. You know, populations have declined.
Cayla: Yeah.
Andy: And you know, they're in economic hard straits, oftentimes closing schools. So you have this, this overlap, you know that's really interesting. You know, what do you want to leave behind? And in terms of grass and wetland on the landscape and what do you want to what do you want to keep, you know, in terms of grass and wetland on the landscape as Mike reframes it? And what do you want to keep in terms of rural communities? How do you revitalize those? Are those connected? Because they could be.
Cayla: I think so. I think we see it here a lot like things like I mean, I don't know if it's necessarily our place as Game and Fish to get super involved, but like how opening a daycare facility in a tiny town helps a family stay there and stay on the ranch and do more sustainable ranching. And it's, yeah, I think there are a lot of connections.
Mike: Yeah. There's communities that most of the communities that you see that are thriving today in, in rural America are there might be some incentives that they're getting from, from somewhere else, but it always gets down to people, you know, individuals that taking a chance, sticking their necks out a little bit, doing something different and saying that they don't want to let that town die.
Andy: And I do think we have to rethink environmental services in a way that thinks about multigenerational environmental values, whether that's water conservation, you know, to fuel future water uses you know, in our own interest, you know, because you can't run out of water, you can't run out of clean water, you know, so, so when you think about working lands and the environmental services, people don't want a hand out, people don't want some government program that just pays them to do what they're doing. People want to, you know, people want to be recognized for the value of what they provide. And I think in the ranching community, there are a lot of environmental services that are not credited. And I think that's got to be a piece of the policy pie in retaining big chunks of grass, you know, and slowing the loss down.
Ron: I would imagine that much of your trip has been on your bikes been spent off the major roadways. Right?
Andy: Oh, yeah.
Ron: Yeah. Well, you're seeing a little bit of slice of America that a lot of people aren't seeing because they're on 94, 83, whatever, zipping by fast.
Andy: So oh yeah, we're seeing all these small towns, you know, our ranking, our roads would be rural, rural pavement, you know, with low traffic. That's number one. Compact good rural gravel, probably number two. And then we'll take, you know, a state highway number three and then crappy gravel. That's like, we'll do it if we have to, but we don't want washboards and soft gravel.
Cayla: Yeah.
Andy: But that's sort of our ranking system, you know, and that's taken us through all these little towns. And we've been through so many towns with under a population of 300. I mean, I mean, the biggest towns we've seen, Bismarck's either the second or third biggest town we're going to see on the whole trip.
Mike: Yeah.
Cayla: Do you have a favorite little town?
Mike: Well, the one that that immediately pops up to me is, is a very little town and we mentioned it earlier the folks here Gann Valley, South Dakota.
Andy: South Dakota.
Andy: Yeah.
Cayla: The lesser Dakota as we.
Andy: Oh.
Mike: Well, Gann Valley is in and correct me Andy, but it's, it's, it's Buffalo County, which is the smallest county in South Dakota, but it's also the smallest county in the entire United States. And the population of Gann Valley was ten and, and, and we met probably six of the people that lived there. Yeah. And all delightful and all had a story to tell, you know, and, and to me, something like that. Just, just I mean, both of my folks come from rural backgrounds in Nebraska. And I just, you know, these are good people that are out there. And I think oftentimes either marginalized or forgotten and, and there's no reason for that, you know, and, and if we can, if we, in our, in our own tiny little way doing this, you know, little project of ours can help shine a light and lift up their story then. And I think that's just as important as anything else that we're doing too. You know, it's just a doorway, right? So.
Ron: Being from South Dakota Andy, did you pedal near home or not.
Andy: I, well my best friend from high school drove out to see us on the route and my folks came out too. And so yeah, it was we definitely got some home attention, you know, in Nebraska too. And Mike being from there and me having lived there most of a decade, we had quite a quite a few friends and family join as well. So along the way, we've sorta just like cranes flocked up for periods and then the flock breaks apart and it's just us riding again, you know, so, so, you know, one thing you know, to add on this is kind of and I'm probably taking you out of your normal North Dakota Game and Fish podcast area. But when you start to think about the problems in the Great Plains, you do think about solving them holistically and creatively. And, and you know, one thing I keep thinking about is a lot of our problems, even in urban areas are solved by revitalizing rural communities because housing is really cheap there. Everybody's like, I can't afford a house in X city. Well, you know, that's a place, you know, you probably could, you know, and it's just a really interesting place where we're at, you know. Yeah, I don't, I don't, like I said, don't have solutions, but sustainable rural communities and sustainable working lands have to be tied together.
Ron: You know, the one thing we haven't we've talked about habitat this and that. Of course we've mentioned the cranes on again off again. That's why we're doing you guys are doing this.
Andy: Our muse as Mike would say.
Ron: What's cool about these birds? What gets the guy in a saddle to pedal to Canada? What's cool about the birds?
Mike: I think cranes are very charismatic birds. They're very human like in their mannerisms. They wear their emotions on their sleeves. They've been in a part of, human culture for millennia, right. They were here before we were, in a lot of ways. And so, I think there's something that's somewhat innate there. Here in North America, we have, you know, the most populous crane species of all. There's 15 crane species in the world. Sandhill crane is the most populous of all, with over a million, like 1.3 or 4 million birds or so. And the whooping crane is the rarest. You know, it's at less than 800, I guess, in the in the wild and captive populations.
Cayla: Although Sandy, well, still the lowest. But Sandy just sent me that they had record counts on the nesting grounds. Okay.
Mike: Yeah, they did. Yeah. And that's been that's been wonderful. So it's a, you know, for a bird that in the 1940s are less than 20 left in the entire world, that today, in this self-sustaining migratory population between Wood Buffalo National Park and Aransas National Wildlife Refuge goes through North Dakota twice a year. 550 or so birds, you know, over an 80-year period when everybody had written them off in the 1940s, save a few people. It is a conservation success story today that these birds are still here. Now it's tenuous. Right. But they are they are continuing to climb at what, about 4% a year maybe or so.
Andy: That was historically, if you go from the late 1930s till now, you get about like 4.2% percent growth rate. But what we've seen in the last decade is more like two point something, 2.5, 2.9. And that's sort of, you know, are we starting to see the stress of sort of some of the, the stressors at a landscape scale impact them a little bit? It's one of our concerns. You know, so between 2 and 3% in recent, you know, in the last decade, but four over 4% in the last 80 years on average. So it's pretty good annual growth rate. But you know, the cranes, like they're really, you know, it's, it's a rebound. But, you know, the only breeding, the only breeding bird in on the endangered species list that's rarer is the California condor. And like Mike said, you know, we don't have an exact count of whooping cranes anymore. You know, it's actually the survey technique actually ends up being like plus minus 80. So the point estimate is 557 plus minus like 85. But you know, we say 555-560 is a good, a good thing to say, you know, and then you know, counting the reintroduced birds and the ones in captivity, you're at like 838-840. The next rarest crane in the world is the red crowned crane, which had a similar history. It almost was lost from Japan and has similarly rebounded. There's 4,000 of those. There are six, 7,000 Siberian cranes also in one population. And you know, it's a very rare crane. You know, how does something hang on with under a thousand individuals? I was involved in some research on genetics and we found they lost over 70% of their genetic diversity. You know, and they won't start recovering that until they hit a couple thousand birds.
Cayla: Right.
Andy: You know, so right now they're still losing it, but slowly. But the good thing is somehow these birds are just so damn resilient. They the term is purging deleterious variants. Actually, as they lost diversity, they have these runs of similar genetics called runs of homozygosity. But they purged a lot of the worst, you know, recessive traits. So actually, even though there's not a lot of diversity, what they have is pretty good.
Cayla: Yeah.
Andy: Luckily. And that's just like by virtue of fate. So these birds have escaped the fate of extinction so many times over in the Russian roulette wheel, you know, and I think that has to be captivating. Another captivating thing about cranes is they're really an ancient family. As Mike mentioned, they their radiation of gruiformes and gruidae. The group, the family and of birds they are goes all the way back to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The original radiation of birds, 64 or 65 million years after the dinosaurs go extinct 66 million years ago, the birds really diversify and fill a bunch of niches. You can trace the gruiformes gruidae lineage all the way back there. And there's, you know, the crowned cranes in Africa look similar to what they probably did 25 million years ago and the sandhill, might be unchanged in the last 11 or 12 million years, but it's hard to parse out. So these these birds, you know, been around a lot longer than us. You know, our Homo habilis ancestor was what, 2 million years ago and Homo sapiens even more recently. So, you know, they've outlived us a long time. And I hope they continue. We continue to persist on this world sustainably together.
Mike: So you circle that all back to this big, tall angel. White bird. Tallest bird in North America. Five feet tall. You know, eight-foot wingspan and those birds are still here. And they move through North Dakota twice a year. And imagine you being in downtown Bismarck or being out on your horse or being out with your kid, you know, hunting, fishing, or whatever that is. And you happen to look up and you see this bird. You hear that call, you'll never forget that the rest of your life. And that's something to be really, really proud of here for folks that live here. Because these birds need these places, these birds need these, you know, the, the, the habitat that you've got here is critical in the survival of these birds.
Ron: Are you anxious to be done?
Mike: Yeah. I mean, yes, in one, in one way, you know, and my legs just answered that and my back just answered that and all of that. But you know, it's I think for Andy and I, it's somewhat of a perpetual journey. You know, you're never really, really done. We’ve been so damn fortunate to be able to do what we are passionate about, what we're curious about, what we love, you know, and, and call it work, you know, because it really, it really isn't. It's sort of, it's part of it's part of who we are. And so, there will be parts of me that will be super happy when we're done. And there will be, I'm sure parts of me that will be a little bit sad.
Ron: Well, there's parts of you that go numb and aren't supposed to that you never knew.
Mike: Amen, brother.
Cayla: But if it's anything like a marathon, you finish and then you find yourself signing up for another. So next they'll be pedaling the.
Mike: Yeah. Who knows?
Andy: Right. There's some endorphins there for sure. You know, I mean, I mean, Mike is just a gracious. I mean, we both we both do our you know, he's a gracious guy. And it's not many people he could do this with. And even, you know, you go on vacation with your family, right? And by the end you're like, oh my God, you know, and, and, and Mike's such a nice guy. And we both are hopefully pretty mindful and empathetic. And we've really enjoyed our time together, you know, and, and I think that's, that's pretty rare too. And you know, the truth is we've, we've met so many people along the way and we're both, you know, recharge alone at times. And it's been, it's been a whirlwind, you know, and you know, I think we're probably both going to go crawl in a hole after this.
Mike: Oh, yeah.
Andy: And, and we're going to then we're going to think about what it was.
Mike: Right.
Andy: You know, and I just, I, you know, say on air, I mean, I appreciate so much doing this guy because there's not a lot of people I could do this with. And it's not easy to do anything like this with anybody. You know, it's, it's a hard deal. And it's and every day, you know, you're working through different physical and mental and emotional things. But like Mike said, you know, we're blessed to be able to get to do this and to, to call it work, you know, but at the same time, we're working from when we wake up to when we go to bed, you know, and we were having a joke in the car on this trip, you know, in the SAG wagon. And the team was teasing Mike about his projects. You know, he has a list of hobbies he'd like to do. And he's like, oh, I just get to do my projects. And I feel that too. When you really love something and you really love conservation, it becomes all consuming. And the trip is this trip is a pinnacle of that. I mean, we're both just fully every day from when we wake up to when we go to bed on and when we shut off for after this trip, we're going to really know what it means. We won't know. I won't know until I get home and I hit the pillow and I'm like, Jesus Christ, that was that was pretty crazy. That was pretty cool. Like the marathon,
Cayla: Yeah.
Andy: It's not it's not popping the blister on your foot at the end where you're like, I'm signing up for another one. It's a week later.
Cayla: Yeah, yeah. You mentioned and he was talking about SAG wagon and I thought it just meant like, for when you're sagging behind. But then I realized it stands for support and gear. Yeah. Do you guys want to talk about that a little bit? Just some of the logistics of pulling it off.
Mike: Yeah. We have a, we have a, we've had several sag.
Cayla: Actually, looks like a Toyota Tacoma drivers.
Mike: It is, that's my truck that's been signed up as the SAG wagon with magnetic stickers with the whooper highway on the side of it. Down in the southern Plains we had, we had a few different SAG drivers, all known and trusted friends and colleagues of ours that pitched in. And then when we hit Central Plains, were we in Kansas? Maybe, I think, or maybe Nebraska, we ended up we got our, we got our young man, Ethan Graff, who is recently graduated with degrees in political science and history from the University of Nebraska that is treading water until law school probably this fall. And he's also a works for a friend of mine and is a good dude and a bicycle mechanic and needed something to do this summer. So Ethan drives the van or drives the truck. And yeah, we have that, as Andy mentioned a little earlier. We start in the morning and then we go about ten miles and then we meet up with Ethan and we sort of figure out what's hurting and what do we need and all that. And then then he goes another ten miles or so, and then another ten miles or so. And, and we're checking in like that. And you know, we've got a rolling buffet of snacks and water and, and such. So tiger balm, Tiger balm. Yes.
Andy: Trying to get them to sponsor us. I don't know, help with that.
Mike: Which is icy hot. It's icy hot, but it's all natural ingredients.
Andy: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. So it's great to have that support. We, we thought and when we started thinking about this trip, we thought that we might have places where we'd be self-contained and we could do that. And we're prepared to do that if we need to. But it's sure nice to have be able to, you know, crawl up over the next hill in North Dakota. And to see on the distant horizon, there's the one, there's the Toyota truck waiting for us.
Andy: Yeah, there's Ethan pulled over with the seat down, reading a book with his feet up. Yeah. And we know there's a place to get some water.
Mike: Playing good tunes.
Cayla: So cool. Yeah, I don't know. Anything else?
Ron: Go rest.
Cayla: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah, we're gonna go take a nap and wake up and do it all again tomorrow.
Ron: Well, good.
Mike: That's right.
Ron: Do you do you still roll out of bed thinking, yeah, I want to jump on that bike. Yeah, I can do that today. I know you have to.
Andy: I jump on thinking I want to see the next segment. Yeah, yeah. I don't necessarily want to get on the bike seat.
Ron: Yeah yeah yeah I hear you.
Mike: What's around the next bend. Yeah, yeah.
Cayla: I should also mention that you can follow along or I guess at this point you guys will probably be wrapped up, but you can see what they did, whoopingcranechronicles.com.
Mike: Yeah. Thank you. That website features a whole lot of stuff, not just about our trip, but about other things that we've done with whooping cranes over the last several years. And what we'll continue to do. So great thing about these, these online platforms as they continue to evolve, right? You know, we got you guys to.
Ron: My daughter called me today. She was flying in from Denver for work. And I told her, she goes, where are you going? I said, I'm going to do this podcast with these fellows. And she said, oh, tell em what up she goes. I've been following them. Really?
Cayla: Oh wow.
Ron: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway.
Andy: We got Mike's my team has a social media person, Grace Carey, who is just absolutely outstanding. We don't know. I mean, I definitely don't do Mike knows what he's doing on social media. I won't speak for him. But Grace is really up on this stuff. And it's been I mean, I don't know what I'm going to see at the end of the day.
Cayla: I saw a thing about your guy's fashion, about where you guys shop.
Mike: Gen Z’er stuff, man. And it's safe to say just trust us. It's like, no, please just trust us, okay?
Andy: There's one that might come out that's going to embarrass the heck out of me, but we'll see.
Mike: We get right of first refusal
Andy: Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Yeah.
Cayla: All right. I'll get into the department droppings. I don't have much this time. Come see us at the state fair. There's still time when this airs. A couple more days going on. So you can take in the free fishing, free pellet guns, archery, all those good things. And then it should be open at this point or opening soon because the pronghorn deadline is August 5th. Otherwise, I'm not saying Casey’s tagline so see you next time.