The Pride of Africa: Efforts underway to protect Africa's endangered grey crowned crane

Grasslands such as those found in Nandi County, Kenya, provide the ideal habitat for the non-migrant grey crowned crane and the bird, known as the Pride of Africa, was once found abundantly across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

But habitat loss, climate change and human actions have led to a steep decline in its population.

Joseph Rotich is a local farmer: "These birds were destroying our food and we got angry and decided to kill them. We poisoned them and many of them died but we came to realise if we finish them we are going to have nothing left. In my culture we really value these birds as they are our totem so once we were educated on the importance of the bird, we saw it was good not to kill them. We discovered that they do not eat our maize once it has germinated."

Records show the bird's population in Kenya is down to 10,000 from the 35,000 recorded in 1986. The grey crowned crane is now on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Endangered Species.

"The grey crowned crane experiences a lot of threats causing its population to go down," explains Eva Tokoi, a Senior Field Officer with Kenya's International Crane Foundation. "Some of these threats include human related disturbances in wetlands and also to cranes. It also includes cases where cranes are being traded, we also have issues on fences, issues on power lines - collision and electrocution and so many others."

Ensuring compliance

Conservation efforts to help the crane survive and thrive focus on protecting its habitat and ensuring the compliance of nearby communities.

"The International Crane Foundation has come in to provide solutions to saving this bird to ensure that its population does not go down," Tokoi says. "One of the things that we are doing is ensuring that those wetlands that have been encroached into and were being utilised by cranes are restored back to their normal situation where the cranes can go back to use them. We are also supporting those communities that are living near those wetlands by giving them alternative livelihoods that will cause them to now stop using those wetlands for farming."

In neighboring Uganda, where the crane features on the national flag and coat of arms, anyone killing the bird faces a fine of up to 5 million dollars.