Saturday 8 September 2012

Putin Leads Endangered Cranes in Hang Glider

Putin Leads Endangered Cranes in Hang Gli

In the end he didn't have to wear a beak, but Vladimir Putin did don white overalls and big black goggles as he took to the skies over northern Siberia in a motorized hang glider to help endangered cranes begin their migration to wintering grounds in Iran and India.

 Putin, who is a few days short of his 60th birthday, has spent about a year and a half preparing for the trip with the cranes and received 17 hours of advance training on the motorized hang glider.

Wednesday's flight took place in Russia's far north, by the banks of the Siberian river Ob, at the site of a project that rears cranes in their traditional nesting grounds. The birds have almost been driven to extinction by hunters targeting them along their migration routes through central Asia.

After his flight Putin donated the hang glider, which his press spokesman said he had purchased with his own money, to the crane conservation project and shared fish soup and tea prepared over a campfire with the scientists working there, the state-owned paper Rossisskaya Gazeta reported.

Putin followed his close encounter with birds with a close encounter with sea life. On his arrival on Thursday at the Asia Pacific Economic Forum in Vladivostok, which Russia is hosting, he visited a new aquarium in the city. Staff pulled an octopus out of its tank, which Putin proceeded to stroke, Interfax reported.

The cranes will now remain under the supervision of the presidential administration, which already cultivates Putin's nature-loving credentials by assisting schemes dedicated to preserving polar bears, tigers, leopards, and whales in Russia.