Teton Regional Land Trust Presents the 7th Annual Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival
Teton Regional Land Trust (TRLT) is excited to host the Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival, which returns to Teton Valley in its seventh year from Wednesday, September 18 to Saturday, September 21. This annual festival aims to give attendees the opportunity to both view Sandhill Cranes and to learn about this iconic species through tours and viewings, workshops, film, and art. The timing of the festival coincides with the fall pre-migration staging period, when Sandhill Cranes gather in Teton Valley before migrating south, and is designed to raise awareness of these majestic birds and the habitat upon which they depend. By learning about and connecting with Sandhill Cranes at the Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival, the Land Trust hopes attendees will leave inspired by the species and the natural world that surrounds us all.
This year’s festival includes morning crane tours, evening stationary crane viewings, a photography workshop with Linda Swope, a plein air workshop with Sue Tyler, a screening of the award-winning film, Wings Over Water at Pierre’s Theatre, and ends with a celebration of crane art on Saturday evening featuring crane inspired dance performances, a crane art and sculpture auction, and a presentation by Mary Lou Oslund, this year’s featured artist and winner of the Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival poster contest. To register for any of these events, please visit tetonlandtrust.org/events.
The poster contest has always been a key element of the festival and has featured many local and regional artists. Mary Lou’s winning artwork, entitled “Foraging for Food Near the River’s Edge,” is a colorful expression of her love of cranes and is the first winning artwork to include a baby crane, or colt. To create the piece, Oslund used a wood burning technique that starts with one of her own photographs. She draws the image onto a piece of wood using special heated pens, and then paints over the wood-burned image with acrylic paint. As this is a fairly new technique for Mary Lou, she will be talking about it and demonstrating how she does it at Saturday’s community event. “I am just thrilled to have one of my pieces represent the Land Trust at the Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival,” exclaimed Oslund, “I feel like I really know this animal. I’m fascinated with their families, their flight, and just trying to portray them in the best way.”
All proceeds from Crane Festival events go towards the Greater Yellowstone Sandhill Crane Initiative at Teton Regional Land Trust, the purpose of which is to secure and actively manage habitat in Teton Valley to sustain the largest pre-migration staging population of Sandhill Cranes in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. As part of the Initiative, the Land Trust runs the Grain for Cranes program. This is an effort to establish annual food plots to ensure adequate crane food resources across the valley. To achieve this, we partner with landowners to grow, cut, and leave barley for the cranes to forage on at strategically located properties near roosting sites.
Historically, over 5,000 Sandhill Cranes spent the fall in Teton Valley, fueling up before migrating to the south for the winter. Due to habitat degradation and fragmentation caused by increased development and disturbances, numbers fell to as few as 500 birds in the 1980s. Thankfully, efforts to protect their habitat and provide them with accessible grain to forage have helped the population rebound dramatically. In 2023, the Land Trust counted a peak of 1,137 Sandhill Cranes in a single day and 4,248 total cranes were counted over a 6-day period in Teton Valley.
Festival attendees support the Initiative by registering for any of the festival activities, bidding on auction items, and purchasing Crane Festival merchandise. The community can also support the Initiative and the Grain for Cranes program by visiting tetonlandtrust.org or calling our office at 208-354-8939. The Land Trust looks forward to celebrating the return of Sandhill Cranes to Teton Valley with our wonderful eastern Idaho community.
Since 1990, the Land Trust has worked with partner organizations and landowners to protect over 42,000 acres in eastern Idaho through conservation easements and other voluntary conservation options.
