CCCC’s Mission
Conserving Rocky Mountain Greater Sandhill Cranes and their habitat through science and education.
2024 First Crane Sighting Contest Results
Colorado Crane Conservation Coalition (CCCC) is pleased to announce the results of the 2024 First Crane Sighting Contest! This year CCCC received more than 20 sightings of Sandhill Cranes in the Yampa Valley! The returning cranes were first reported in Craig and then West Moffat County. The very first crane sighting on March 7 was comparable to previous years. Even with the continued snow through the latter part of March, the cranes returned right on schedule. Thank you to all who participated in the contest. Click here to check out the contest winners and all the entries.
Sandhill Crane Nest Camera
Our livestream Crane Nest Camera is live!
View CCCC’s 2023 highlights
(click on the image to make it larger):
Sandhill Cranes
The Greater Sandhill Crane is an iconic species of the Yampa Valley in Northwest Colorado. Returning in the spring from wintering grounds in New Mexico and Arizona, cranes nest and raise their young in wetland areas throughout the valley. At summer’s end during the peak of their stopover in the Yampa Valley, we present our annual crane festival. The purpose of the Yampa Valley Crane Festival is to educate the public about these ancient birds and to celebrate their presence in Northwest Colorado.
Aldo Leopold, the famous conservationist, wrote in a Sand County Almanac,
“Our appreciation for the crane grows with the slow unraveling of earthly history. His tribe, we now know, stems out of the remote Eocene. The other members of the fauna in which he originated are long since entombed within the hills. When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.”
Once you have heard the call of a crane, you will remember it forever.
Yampa Valley Crane Festival
CCCC presents the annual Yampa Valley Crane Festival each fall. The festival occurs in beautiful Northwest Colorado where Greater Sandhill Cranes gather in staging areas to feed before migrating south.
The 13th annual festival will take place Aug 29-Sept 1, 2024.
Yampa Valley Cranes
Sandhill Cranes breed, raise their young, and stage during the fall in the Yampa Valley of Northwest Colorado. Check out this short video of our Yampa Valley Cranes from breeding through staging: