ONLINE: Cranes in the Rice Zone: Sarus Crane Conservation in Southeast Asia

RSVP: https://savingcranes.zoom.us/webinar/register/8015929423327/WN_V9mDZZgQQfmzBf0W6dYpVg

press release: Join International Crane Foundation for a webinar with Tran Triet, Southeast Asia Program Coordinator, on Thursday, July 2, at 11 a.m. Central Time.

Standing up to six feet tall, the Sarus Crane is the world’s tallest flying bird. Sarus Cranes occur across India, Southeast Asia and Northern Australia. In Southeast Asia, we focus on the Eastern Sarus Crane subspecies that depend on wetlands in three large river systems: the Mekong, the Chao Praya and the Irrawaddy. These regions are also important rice production areas of the world with several countries among the world’s top ten rice exporters. Expansion of agricultural lands, mainly for rice cultivation, and intensive rice farming practices have reduced areas of natural wetlands and degraded the quality of aquatic environments, causing adverse impacts on not only Sarus Cranes but also wetland biodiversity in general.

In this webinar, we will present how the International Crane Foundation has worked with conservation partners and local communities in Southeast Asia to conserve Sarus Cranes over the past three decades, in a landscape that is densely populated and intensively farmed. We will showcase how we developed an award-winning project in Vietnam that saved wetlands and contributed to the wellbeing of local communities. We will also discuss how we created a network of 24 universities and hundreds of wetland practitioners across the region and how we are replicating and expanding these successful models for crane conservation in Myanmar.