Terry and Mary Kohler, who have made significant contributions to the recovery of endangered whooping cranes in eastern North America, were honored today by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Interior, presented the Kohlers with the department’s Cooperative Conservation Award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
The award recognizes conservation achievements by groups of diverse partners, including federal, state, local and tribal governments, non-government organizations, and individuals. The Kohlers, through their Sheboygan, Wis., company, Windway Capital Corp., have donated time, equipment and funds that have been among the keys to the success of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, an international coalition of public and private groups that is reintroducing this highly imperiled species in eastern North America.
The Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey are among the nine founding members of this partnership.
“ Terry and Mary Kohler and their flight team at Windway Capital Corp. have truly helped to make wildlife history with their generous support of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership,” said Robyn Thorson, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Midwest Regional Director. “Their dedication is a testament to the human spirit. Terry and Mary’s generous support and encouragement has helped to restore an important part of our nation’s wildlife heritage that might otherwise have been lost.”
For nearly two decades, the Kohlers have made significant contributions to migratory bird conservation in the United States and abroad. From 1987 to 1996, they made annual flights to Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park to bring back the eggs that have served as the foundation for the reintroduced eastern migratory whooping crane population, which migrates between Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin and Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf coast of Florida.
Windway aircraft and pilots have also flown countless missions to identify crane roosting and nesting sites, locate and track migrating birds, and transfer eggs and chicks to propagation facilities, including the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
The Kohlers have also provided substantial funding to the whooping crane reintroduction effort in the form of matching grants, and they donated ultralight aircraft for the project and purchased a hangar for them. As a result of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership’s—and Terry and Mary Kohler’s—efforts, there are 57 migrating whooping cranes in eastern North America, where just six years ago there were none.
The Kohlers have also made important contributions to international crane conservation, making a record-breaking around-the-world flight to deliver Siberian crane eggs from Wisconsin to Russia. The Siberian crane is one of the world’s most endangered birds and a priority species for international conservation.
Among their other contributions to bird conservation in the United States, the Kohlers personally made ten flights to transport imperiled trumpeter swan eggs from Alaska to a captive breeding program at the Milwaukee Zoo. With the Kohlers’ help, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has successfully reintroduced wild trumpeter swans in that state.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal Federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 96-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System, which encompasses 545 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 69 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resources offices and 81 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign and Native American tribal governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Assistance program, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.
