International Crane Foundation

Cranes are found on nearly every continent, and every one of the world's fifteen species is represented at the foundation, from the stately whooping crane and the enormous sarus crane to the crowned cranes of Africa and the graceful demoiselle. No other place on earth gathers them all, which makes a walk through the grounds a journey across the crane world.

The birds are housed in spacious exhibits with signs explaining where each species lives, what threatens it, and how the foundation works to help it. Cranes are among the oldest bird lineages alive, revered in cultures around the globe as symbols of longevity, fidelity, and peace, and seeing so many kinds together gives a rare sense of their variety and grandeur.

The foundation's most famous work centers on the whooping crane, a bird that plunged to only a handful of individuals in the middle of the twentieth century, one of the most endangered birds in North America. Through captive breeding, careful rearing, and reintroduction efforts, conservationists have slowly rebuilt the population from the brink.

The work has demanded ingenuity, from raising chicks in ways that keep them wild to teaching young cranes migration routes. The story is not finished, and the whooping crane remains rare and fragile, but its recovery from near-extinction stands as one of the signal achievements of American wildlife conservation, and the foundation has been at its heart.

The foundation began in 1973 when two young ornithologists, George Archibald and Ron Sauey, started a crane center on Sauey's family horse farm near Baraboo. From those modest beginnings it grew into an organization working across the world, in Africa, Asia, and beyond, to protect crane species and the wetlands and grasslands they need.

Because cranes depend on healthy wetlands, protecting them means protecting whole landscapes and the water and communities that share them. The foundation's approach ties bird conservation to habitat and to the people who live alongside cranes, making the humble Wisconsin headquarters the nerve center of a genuinely global effort.

The grounds themselves are a restoration success, acres of tallgrass prairie and wetland brought back from farmland to show the habitats cranes require. Trails wind through the restored landscape, alive with native plants, butterflies, and birds, so that a visit is as much a prairie walk as a zoo trip.

The setting is the rich country around the Baraboo Hills and Devil's Lake, in a part of Wisconsin long inhabited by the Ho-Chunk Nation. Nearby Baraboo offers the Circus World Museum and Devil's Lake State Park, and the crane foundation slots naturally into a day of exploring one of the state's most scenic and storied corners.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.