Whooper swans split the still winter air on a frozen lake in Hokkaido, the nothernmost of Japan's big islands. It's one of the snowiest places on Earth, with beauty as dramatic as its climate.

What they have learned is sobering. While the crane population in Japan is slowly increasing, at an average rate of about 5 to 7 percent each year, its habitat is rapidly shrinking, which will ultimately limit its numbers. Some 90 pairs of cranes now nest in Kushiro Mire—"probably more than the marsh can handle," says Yulia. With the decrease in the marsh area, the density of breeding has increased, explains Masatomi, who has studied the crane and its behavior for almost 40 years and is considered its foremost expert. "Ten years ago, there were two nests in each ten-square-kilometer area; now there are four or five. Because the birds are territorial, this crowding can reduce the number of surviving chicks. While the adults fight to defend their territory, the chicks are left vulnerable to predators—foxes, eagles, crows."

A few crane pairs that winter in Hokkaido have begun breeding in the nearby Kuril Islands. There is other good breeding habitat just to the north of Hokkaido in the wild, open marshes of Sakhalin Island. Several years ago Yulia suggested to Japan's Ministry of the Environment that it explore the possibility of transferring pairs of cranes there to expand their range. "It's unnatural, and risky, to have the whole population of cranes concentrated in the Kushiro area," Yulia says. "Bringing the birds together at feeding stations increases the risk of catastrophic mortality if disease were to strike. These birds can survive on their own, even in winter—if they have good habitat." But Yulia's idea never came to pass, in part because of tense relations between Japan and Russia, which have yet to resolve their decades-old dispute over ownership of the Kuril Islands.

For more than a thousand years the Japanese have written the tancho into poems and folktales and myths. They have painted it and made statues and sculptures of it. They have revered it as a symbol of long life, happiness, good luck, fidelity. From its life habits they have drawn phrases and metaphors to describe their own behavior. They have imitated it and tried to dance as it dances. They have caught and killed and eaten it, almost to the point of extinction. They have named cities and streets after it. They have folded it into tiny birds of paper and hung them carefully in colored festoons at temples and shrines and on the stone monuments to Hiroshima in Peace Memorial Park. They have made it a national treasure. They have captured, marked and released it, tracked it and spied on its habits and behavior. They have fed it. They have tried to raise it in captivity for release and failed. Most of all, they have made it into an icon and put its image everywhere, so that this extremely rare bird is, ironically, seen throughout Japan—on teacups and trays and fans, on lampposts and bridges, on wedding cards, kimonos, and cakes, on the backs of thousand-yen notes and the tail fins of jets.

The story of the red-crowned crane in Japan is emblematic of other animals. Though the nation's knowledge of nature and its reverence for animals are ancient, its efforts to protect wildlife are relatively young. Since the early 20th century Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs has designated certain plants and animals as "natural monuments," cultural assets of the people. The designation protects various species under special laws, which prohibit their destruction except when they infringe on human enterprise. Today there are close to 200 species that rank as monuments, from the red-crowned crane to the goatlike serow.

But monument status does little to protect an animal's rich biological context. Nor does it guarantee any government commitment to the study of its ecology. Often completely overlooked is the fate of the animal's habitat, the old-growth forest or sedge-and-reed wetland that harbors thousands of other species that may be critical to its well-being.

The first of Japan's national parks were created in 1934 not for the benefit of wildlife but for physical fitness and other recreational activities. These days the 28 national parks and 55 so-called quasi-national parks fall under the umbrella of the Ministry of the Environment, whose mission is to secure "the coexistence of people and nature." But "the primary purpose of the parks is still to draw people and to create a source of revenue for the area," says Masaaki Kohmaru, who served with the government's environment agency for 25 years. Some of the national park land is privately owned and, according to the official literature of the ministry, management of the parks "requires consideration of people's property rights and various industrial activities in the areas concerned." At Kushiro Mire, says Yulia, "you can still get permission to drain and develop, depending on who you know."

"We are a tiny land," explains Kohmaru. "Unlike America, we don't have any place where no one lives, so we have to make compromises."