Maple Moments: Bill Lishman

Bill Lishman did so many different things in his life — artist, designer, writer, filmmaker, inventor, environmental activist, public speaker — that when strangers asked what he did for a living, he’d say, “Can you start with an easier question?”

But this is what made Bill Lishman world famous: piloting an ultralight aircraft, surrogate parent to a flock of geese who would follow him anywhere. The pictures were mesmerizing, so fresh, so beautiful, they were unforgettable.

It all started quite by chance on a flight one day in 1985. A flock of ducks encircled him, and Lishman found the experience so exhilarating he set out to try to make it happen again. He kept goose eggs in an incubator, and when the goslings hatched, he learned about the process of imprinting from the naturalist William Carrick. The young would follow the first thing they saw moving. That’s usually their mother, but in this case it was Bill Lishman. The birds would follow him on foot, on a motorcycle, and ultimately a flock of 12 flew behind his ultralight plane.

In 1993, he completed his first migration. The geese wouldn’t find a safe way south on their own because these skills are learned from their parents. Lishman led 18 geese on a flight of almost 650 kilometres from his home in Ontario to a nature retreat in Virginia. And in the spring, they came back.

Hollywood couldn’t resist the story or the images. In 1996, Fly Away Home was a fictionalized version of the Bill Lishman story, its cinematography nominated for an Academy Award.

All this may sound like fun, but Lishman’s methods were used for a serious purpose. He co-founded Operation Migration, which helped save the world’s whooping crane population. The species was on the brink of extinction. At one point, there were fewer than 20 left. Hand-raised cranes were imprinted on an ultralight for a 2,000-kilometre migration route, and in 2006, the first migratory whooping crane in over 100 years hatched in the United States. Because of that and other conservation efforts, today there are about 800 whooping cranes in the world. One wildlife official called it the wildlife equivalent of putting a man on the moon.

It’s a fitting tribute to a wildlife hero, Father Goose.