Krapu to speak at VC museum

Dr. Gary Krapu, a research biologist at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center and a resident of Valley City, will discuss his recent travels in Russia at the Barnes County Historical Society Museum at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, at the museum.

Krapu’s slide talk titled “Siberia on 2 Bean Geese a Day” will focus on his experiences while leading a scientific expedition during July-August 2009 to identify the western limits of breeding by sandhill cranes and Siberian cranes along the northern frontier of the Sakha Republic. Krapu initiated studies in Russia after nearly one-quarter of the 133 sandhill cranes to which he had attached satellite transmitters while at their annual spring stopover in the Platte River Valley of Nebraska, settled in arctic Russia during the breeding season. After his results indicated that the numbers of sandhill cranes breeding in Russia were much larger than previously thought and were distributed over a much larger area, on-site investigations were initiated to gain a better understanding of sandhill crane distribution and ecology on their breeding grounds in northeastern Asia.

Being the first American in modern times to visit the region where crane surveys were conducted, provided a unique opportunity to learn not only about cranes and other wildlife populations but also interview the native people living there. Traveling by boat and amphibious vehicle, he and the five Russians that accompanied him lived off the land while conducting crane surveys in this remote and almost inaccessible area bordering the Laptev Sea.

His studies in Russia are being jointly sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center where Krapu has studied migratory water bird populations for the past 40 years and by the Russian Academy of Science through the Institute of Biology of the Permafrost Zone located at Yakutsk. This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Wes Anderson, 701-845-096.

Tags: northern prairie wildlife, barnes county, diversions, education, performances, lecure, vcsu