Grassroots Community Network

Speaker: Van K. Graham, Retired Terrestrial Wildlife Biologist Description: The Greater Sandhill Crane is an iconic bird species of the Yampa Valley in Northwest Colorado. Van will present a narrative describing the life history of Colorado’s Greater Sandhill Cranes. He will discuss the annual cycle of crane migration in the fall and their return to our high country nesting habitats in the spring. His presentation will reveal intimate knowledge of how cranes interact with our mountain environment, other wildlife and human settlement in the West. Speaker Bio: Van K. Graham is a retired wildlife biologist who worked for Colorado Parks and Wildlife for 32 years. His interest in sandhill cranes began while working in Steamboat Springs where the core population of Colorado’s nesting and staging cranes is located. Sandhill cranes were listed as a Colorado endangered species in 1973 and by the mid-1970s research on cranes had intensified, primarily to gather baseline data and begin development of management plans an