Mike Forsberg’s Into Whooperland: A Photographer’s Journey with Whooping Cranes chronicles the lives of whooping cranes, North America’s tallest birds and rarest crane in the world.
Recently the book received a Nebraska Book Award in the “nonfiction conservation” category from the Nebraska Center for the Book. The contest recognizes and honors books that are written by Nebraska authors, published by Nebraska publishers, set in Nebraska, or concerning Nebraska. The award will be conferred Nov. 15, 2025 at the Nebraska Celebration of Books at the Nebraska Union on the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
Forsberg also was on the editorial team for The Nebraska Sandhills, published in 2024 by the University of Nebraska Press. That book received a Nebraska Book Award in the category “nonfiction Nebraska as place”.
Into Whooperland was also the cover story for the Autumn 2025 issue of Living Bird, published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The article can be accessed here: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/following-whooping-cranes-by-plane-along-the-whooper-highway/
Since its publication in fall 2024, Into Whooperland has received several reviews including the Wall Street Journal (https://go.unl.edu/whooperland). It was awarded the Gold Medal in the Nature category at the 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards. And it was featured in a recent issue of NEBRASKAland magazine.
The book recounts Forsberg’s five-year effort to document the lives of whooping cranes and their conservation across North America including following their migration journey along the Central Flyway from wintering grounds along the Texas Midcoast to their remote nesting grounds in in northern Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.
Forsberg is a photographer, research assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources and co-founder of the Platte Basin Timelapse. The whooping cranes project has led to the creation of a website https://www.whoopingcranechronicles.com and a podcast series produced by Platte Basin Timelapse, numerous speaking engagements, and an upcoming film.