The trumpeter swan is North America’s largest endemic waterbird. A large male may weigh more than thirty pounds and have a wingspan of more than eight feet. I have seen them in flight and thrilled to the music of those huge wings. The only time I saw a pair close up was when I took time out from a conference on a huge estate in Warrenton, Virginia. Their snowy beauty was marred by large neck collars—I found out later that they were part of a restoration program.

They were swimming gracefully, gliding across the water and every so often pausing to feed, upending to tear up great beakfuls of the aquatic plants that form the bulk of their diet. And I watched, with a mixture of amazement and amusement, the enormous effort it took them to get airborne. First one and then the other, with strenuous beating of the wings and frantic paddling of the feet, gradually lifting their great bodies until they were literally running across the water. I felt quite vicariously exhausted by the time they were both in the air!

Thane described his experience when he first held a trumpeter swan: “I just couldn’t believe how big its feet were” he has written. “I have worked with animals for over 30 years, and held my share of big birds, from Stellar’s sea eagles, which are twice the size of their cousins, the bald eagles, to brown pelicans, and even the Australian emus; and none had feet on the scale of a trumpeter. Imagine thick black swim fins, twice the size of your hand, and you pretty much have it.”

Clearly those huge feet are of utmost importance as they strive to leave the water.

Decline of the Trumpeter
Trumpeter swans were once abundant across much of North America, from the Bering Sea throughout the northern Great Plains and southward to the Mississippi River Basin and the Gulf of Mexico. But from the late 1870s, they were extensively hunted for their meat and for their feathers—it was thought that a wing feather made the very best quill pen. By 1900, only a few small flocks remained in western Canada, remote parts of Alaska, and the wilderness areas near Yellowstone National Park. By the 1950s, only about 150 trumpeter swans were left, and many people feared that these beautiful birds were doomed to become extinct.

It was in 1958 that Winston Banko, manager of Red Rocks Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, suggested there was a need to reestablish trumpeters in parts of their former range in the United States. And in 1960—the year his book The Trumpeter Swan was published—twenty cygnets were captured from Red Rocks and moved to the Lacreek refuge on the central plains. These birds thrived, and a total of thirty-seven additional cygnets were moved during the following two years. One year later, the first young birds were hatched in Lacreek.

Eight years later, in 1968, a group of people from many walks of life—government agencies, biologists, and concerned citizens—formed the nonprofit Trumpeter Swan Society. Together the members formed a network that spanned North America—hundreds of people working together to protect and restore the trumpeters throughout their historic range.

In 1976, the society held a conference near Yellowstone. One of those in attendance was Ruth Shea, a young graduate student at the time. It was, she told me, a turning point in her life, when her “lifelong dedication to trumpeter swan restoration began.” She learned at the conference that trumpeters had been restored to several wildlife refuges and that as a result of strict protection from hunting, overall numbers had increased—there were about five thousand at that time. However, apart from the Alaska population, most of the trumpeters depended for their survival on artificial winter feeding at several national wildlife refuges.

Ruth wrote me, “I was greatly distressed to learn that official restoration policy viewed trumpeter swans as a ‘museum species’—a relict of a vanished wilderness era that could not survive in our modern world. One key agency leader explained to me that trumpeters were now safely restored on several refuges where anyone could go to see them and where these huge, slow-flying birds would not get in the way of waterfowl hunting. A chill went down my spine. From that moment I knew that I would always work to help them break out of those living museums—to rebuild secure populations that could once again become a vibrant part of people’s lives across North America.”

Fortunately, many members of the Trumpeter Swan Society shared that much grander vision. Thanks to their leadership and constant assistance, many restoration efforts have been launched.

A Visit to Lacreek National Wildlife Refuge
I learned more about the trumpeter swan restoration programs when I visited SouthDakota’s Lacreek wildlife refuge in April 2009 at the invitation of refuge manager Tom Koerner and Shilo Comeau. Since 1963, when those first cygnets had hatched there, they told me, the trumpeter population has grown steadily, and the birds have moved into new nesting habitats—mostly within about a hundred miles of Lacreek, where they all tend to congregate in the winter.

It was a bitterly cold day when I visited, and I shivered as I looked out over the flat wetlands, dotted with muskrat homes. Tom explained that the sandhills of South Dakota that rolled along the horizon, together with the sandhills of Nebraska, provided perfect nesting habitat for the growing numbers of trumpeters. They find their food in open water—large shallow ponds and slow-moving shallow rivers—and there is little disturbance in the large isolated wetlands of the sandhills. And so the ranchers are happy that the trumpeter swans return to their land each spring.

More than six years ago all artificial feeding was stopped at the refuge and the birds are now truly a wild free ranging flock. “I have watched the swans extensively during our winters as I am amazed that such a large bird can survive here through some very harsh conditions,” Tom told me. He is convinced that they can do this by fattening up as much as they can in the fall and then conserving as much energy as possible when the weather gets severe and many of their feeding sites freeze up temporarily until the springs open them again.  Tom said, “I have watched trumpeter swans tuck their head under their wings and pull their feet up and stay in one place literally for days as a storm moves through.”

Trumpeters, like other swans, usually mate for life. In late winter, many of them return to their nesting sites in the sandhills—often using the same nest several years running. Young birds form loose flocks at this time and at three or four years of age begin the process of mate selection. During courtship, the swans raise and lower their heads while uttering loud trumpeting calls and swimming slowly together, in perfect synchrony.

The large nest, some six or seven feet in diameter at the base and rising about eighteen inches above the water, is built in the center of a circle of open water from which the pair has uprooted all vegetation. A preferred location is on top of a muskrat house or beaver dam, since this provides the desired elevation. Between three and nine eggs are laid and incubated by the pen; when she leaves the nest to forage for a while, she carefully covers the eggs with vegetation. When the cygnets hatch after thirty-two to thirty-seven days, both parents care for them, supervising their early foraging expeditions when they feed on insects, small crustaceans, and so on—a high-protein diet that helps them grow more quickly.

They start learning to fly when they are about four months old. In some places, it is very important they are able to fly before the water freezes over. Encouraged by the parents, the fifteen-pound youngsters struggle to get airborne, with much flapping and peddling by those big feet. And when finally they succeed, the performance is celebrated with loud triumphant trumpeting. It is about this time that they turn to the vegetarian diet of the adult. When they are a year old, they grow their snowy adult plumage, though they will not become parents themselves for another two or three years.

Release in Montana
Thane described a memorable Memorial Day weekend in 2006 when he was lucky enough to be along when biologists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service were releasing seventeen trumpeters on private ranches in the Blackfoot River Valley in western Montana.

“This attempt to reestablish the birds has gone well,” Thane wrote. On this day we have birds trucked in from a breeding facility in Jackson, Wyoming, as well as experts from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, the U.S. Government, Wyoming Wetland Society and The Nature Conservancy.

Our leader in the release that day was Greg Neudecker, a wildlife biologist with USFW, and a remarkable guy. A native of western Minnesota, he played football of the University of Minnesota and speaks the language of the locals unlike any bureaucrat that might be sent from Washington or the Yale School of Forestry and Environment. As we assemble on a cold spring morning, he explains that ‘one reason this release is significant is that the only known species missing from the Blackfoot Valley for the last 50 years has been the trumpeter swan. By helping to reestablish this bird to this region we are proving that ranchers and the rural human lifestyle can live together with wildlife.

To date, the Blackfoot program is a success. Four of the released birds have returned to the Blackfoot Valley and at least 10 Blackfoot birds were spotted wintering in southeast Idaho. Swan releases will continue until seven breeding pairs are established in the valley. The way things are going that may come sooner then later.
To me, nowhere on Earth is there a better model for conservation than the Blackfoot Valley. For this is no National Park with a fence around it. This is a million acres of working ranchland with every possible political shade colored in the map. But working together to protect what they love, these hard nosed ranchers have kept the valley open enough for cougars, bears and wolves, as well as the swans.

The Work Continues

Recently, Ruth wrote to me:

The work of The Trumpeter Swan Society (www.trumpeterswansociety.org) goes on—uniting those who work to protect essential habitats and to ensure the long-term security of populations. Today there are over 35,000 trumpeters in North America and the species has become a high profile symbol of hope. It was nearly destroyed by the unthinking actions of many people across North America. But it also was restored by the thoughtful and dedicated actions of many people, who shared a common vision and worked together. Today as the clarion call of the Trumpeter Swan rings across long vacant habitats, after one or even two centuries of absence, we are inspired to keep working for a better tomorrow.

Yet again, the dedication and determination of a group of people has saved a glorious bird from extinction. Only once have I seen two trumpeter swans in flight. It was as the sun was setting over a wetland area in South Dakota. I can still close my eyes and hear the creaking music of those huge wings—the song of flight.

The Story of Righty and Lefty
In the spring of 1987, a female captive-bred trumpeter swan from Minnesota Zoo was released in Tamarack Wildlife Refuge. For the first time in her life, the trumpeter was free. Alas, six months later she was shot and so badly injured that her right wing had to be amputated. She was, forever, deprived the joy of flight.
But the story of Righty, as she was subsequently named, did not end there. My friend Dan Miller, director of the Bramble Park Zoo in Watertown, South Dakota, told me how the crippled Righty was sent to him on breeding loan of the zoo almost exactly one year after losing her wing. And there she was introduced to Lefty, a male who had also been shot after release in the Tamarack refuge. His left wing had been amputated.

“And so,” said Dan, “we had two one-winged swans. Amazingly they courted and bonded. And they were wonderful parents.”

In 2005 the male died, but Righty immediately paired up with a young male from the Omaha zoo – “she didn’t miss a beat” said Dan. On 1 June 2009 Dan went to check on their nest. “Five cygnets have just hatched” he told me. “How wonderful” Altogether, Righty (or Old Girl as Dan calls her) has reared more than fifty cygnets that have been released to fly free.

Note to Reader: This sidebar is a companion to our complete Whooping Crane chapter, which appears in Hope for Animals and Their World.