Once common in north America, the trumpeter swan was almost wiped out by hunting. Its dwindling numbers created another problem — the birds lost the ability to pass on migration routes from generation to generation.
Attempts to grow the population of the continent’s largest native waterfowl were hampered because when birds were released into the wild to make the 900-mile trip from Ontario, Canada, to the warmer climes of the southeast of the US they got lost and often perished.
A Canadian sculptor and naturalist, William Lishman, had developed a technique in the 1980s that seemed promising. In a process known as imprinting, some newborn birds attach themselves to whatever is around them when they hatch.
By repeatedly playing goslings the tape-recorded sound of an engine and bonding with them, Lishman was able to train Canada geese to fly behind an ultralight aircraft and follow the plane south. To expand the project, “Father Goose” enlisted the help of Bill Sladen, a noted ornithologist eager to restore trumpeter numbers, who thought that ultralight-induced migration could be a way of returning them to wintering grounds. In the experiments aircraft led the way in a “V” formation.
Sladen had pioneered bird-tracking techniques and was an adviser to the US air force and Federal Aviation Authority on the risks posed to aircraft by migrating swans.
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The task brought him the greatest attention of his long and varied career when “Operation Migration” inspired the 1996 Hollywood movie Fly Away Home starring Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin as a father and daughter who lead a flock of geese.
A scientist in the film, Dr Killian, is inspired by Sladen, who was a wildlife consultant for the film and in demand for media interviews. Some of the avian co-stars ended up living at a pond near his home in Virginia. A 1996 Washington Post profile described him kneeling on a lawn and honking at geese. “You can’t help but get fond of them, even though they do poop up your porch.”
The scheme had some success with geese — who were far more likely to make successful return journeys than if they had been taken south by truck — but using ultralights with trumpeters was abandoned in 2001 because it was too difficult and expensive.
The indefatigable Sladen also made arduous journeys. His research took him to Alaska, Lapland, Iceland and Siberia, and he sometimes commuted between the Arctic and the Antarctic.
One of his earliest jobs was a stern test of his resilience. He travelled to Hope Bay in 1948 to work as a biologist for what is now known as the British Antarctic Survey. The base caught fire while Sladen was out at a penguin observation tent and, with flames fanned by strong winds, two of his colleagues perished in the blaze. Sladen raced to the building and tried shoving snow at the fire, but it quickly spread and a stockpile of ammunition exploded.
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In Sir Vivian Fuchs’s 1982 book, Of Ice and Men, Sladen recalled: “The sinister silence, the dark smoke torrenting down to the sea, the feeling of helplessness, worse still, the thought of Dick [Burd] and Mike [Green] with no one to save them was the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced.”
With the rest of the team away on a survey Sladen was alone, save for a few dogs, for more than two weeks. In this time he lived in a tent, made failed daily attempts to reach the others by radio and slid into depression and loneliness, continuing with his work to distract himself and survived by eating penguin.
“He would kneel on his front lawn and honk at the geese in his garden
William Joseph Lambart Sladen was born in Newport, Wales, in 1920, and grew up in Esher, Surrey, where he soon fell in love with nature. He was a descendent of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, and his parents, Hugh and Catherine, worked for the organisation.
Sladen took two medical degrees before receiving a DPhil in zoology from the University of Oxford. He moved to the US in 1956 on a fellowship and taught graduate students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he would go on to become a professor emeritus. He published more than 120 scientific papers and was awarded an MBE and the Polar Medal. He became an American citizen in the 1960s, but never lost his British accent, which he felt gave him a certain cachet.
He studied adélie penguins at Cape Crozier in the 1960s and filmed them for a 1971 documentary, Penguin City. “If you know these birds as individuals, it’s really fascinating,” Sladen said in 2007. “The older birds come back each year and tend to keep their original mates. The ‘divorce rate’ in the younger birds is about the same as in America.”
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A New York Times report from Antarctica in 1968 described Sladen as “a popular figure, often seen walking about coatless wearing only a pullover and a maroon woollen shirt that clashes violently with his pastel-green corduroy trousers”.
Sladen’s first marriage, to Brenda Macpherson, an artist, ended in divorce in the 1980s. The union produced two children — Hugh, an engineering consultant, and Kate, an artist whose middle name is Adélie. He married Jocelyn Arundel in 1990. They met while banding herons on Chesapeake Bay. She survives him along with his children and his first wife.
In the mid-1960s Sladen discovered DDT residues in adélie penguins from Antarctica, which contributed to the banning of the pesticide in the US in 1972. In the final throes of the Cold War he promoted co-operation between American and Soviet naturalists by visiting Moscow Zoo to present a gift of two trumpeter swans. The Russians are believed to have sent bears in return.
After retiring from teaching in 1990, he moved to Virginia, where he pursued conservation attempts. Hardly slowing down with age, he returned to Antarctica in his eighties. Two mountains in the region are named in his honour.
Professor Bill Sladen, MBE, scientist, was born on December 19, 1920. He died of cerebrovascular disease on May 29, 2017, aged 96