A 50-year effort to raise endangered whooping cranes comes to an end

by Karin Brulliard 

Animal care technician Kathryn Nassar wears a costume and holds a crane puppet as she interacts with a 2-month-old whooping crane at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. 

(Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Each spring for 12 years, Paula Wang began a temporary position at a government lab in a suburb north of Washington. She was required to remain silent while working and to wear a white suit and hood. The mission was not top-secret, but Wang felt it was urgent all the same; she had to save an endangered species…