Every spring Central Nebraska’s Platte River becomes a giant landing strip. As dusk nears, thousands of giant birds fill the sky and begin coming in for a landing. These sandhill cranes are each as tall as kindergarteners with long necks and even longer legs. Their gray-feathered bodies are topped with a single red forehead patch. Nearly half a million cranes have been coming to the area for thousands of years.

As they glide toward the sand and gravel bars in the river, many drop their legs down like aircraft landing gear. It’s a sound-filled scene with trumpeting calls, caws, and trilling sounds called churrs.

The wide, shallow channels of the river are an important stop. The cranes gobble up leftover grain from farm fields and build up fat that fuels their journey to northern nesting grounds in Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. Unfortunately, finding a place to rest along the Platte is getting harder for cranes and other migrating waterfowl and shorebirds.

Centuries ago, snowmelt brought rushing water down the river every spring. These spring flows flushed out built-up brush and scoured the gravel bars clean of vegetation. Today, thirsty farms, factories, towns, and power plants use up 70% of the river’s water before it reaches the cranes. So the slow shallow river gathers debris and plants cover its sand bars, leaving less space for incoming cranes.

Nebraska conservation organizations are now trying to clear out the river’s wide shallow channels where the cranes roost. Kid-collected pennies have so far helped clear and maintain five miles of Platte River channels, roosting sites for sandhill cranes, whooping cranes, least terns, and piping plovers. It’s on-the-ground work that benefits the Platte River. Money from Pennies for the Planet also went toward educating the public about the importance of this habitat for this wildlife.