The Bird Man of Idaho: SAVING OUR SWANS

SAVING OUR SWANS

Kent Clegg likes watching birds, and he likes flying ultralight planes. He finds ways to do both, to the birds' profit. In 1997 Clegg got whooping cranes to follow him in his ultralight from Idaho to New Mexico to try to restart a breeding population of the rare birds in the southwest. Now he has a new passion: trumpeter swans.

The largest waterfowl in the U.S., with wingspans up to 8 ft., trumpeters were hunted nearly to extinction. Their numbers slowly recovered--Idaho now has some 250 resident trumpeters and gets an additional 3,000 in winter migrating from Canada. But too many...

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