For several years Michael Bean has been trumpeting a cause close to his heart. Now he stands on the brink of its most significant breakthrough since his efforts began.

Bean resides in Sennett with two guests in his backyard: trumpeter swans, an endangered waterfowl whose presence in the Finger Lakes and all of the East Coast was once plentiful.

After Christopher Columbus landed in America more than 500 years ago, the trumpeters were shot almost out of existence. The hearty vocalizations for which they were named made them an easy target for hunters. Their uniquely curved wing feathers could also be used as quill pens that people of the time highly coveted.

Centuries of overhunting bled the Atlantic and Midwestern trumpeter swan populations to the point that they were thought extinct in the United States by the 1940s. But since that time, environmentalists and wildlife workers have imported trumpeters back to the eastern United States from areas where they were discovered to still thrive, such as Alaska and the hot springs of Yellowstone Park.

Bean has set out to amend a problem that arose from the trumpeters' displacement. The swans now residing in the area outlying Lake Ontario - between 300 and 500, he estimates - do not know to migrate eastward because the instinct was not inherited from their forbears in the western states. The climate does not threaten the swans themselves.

“They're a cold, hearty species,” Bean said.

However, the trumpeters' food supply all but disappears when nearby water bodies and corn fields are coated with ice and lake effect snow.

To remedy this problem, Bean plans to use current trumpeters from the area as breeding stock to produce eggs that will be placed under Canada geese. As they are raised by the geese, the newly born trumpeters will be taught to migrate to the East Coast and therefore stand a better chance of surviving.

“Hopefully he'll be able to reintroduce them to flyways of the Northeast where they used to fly all over the place,” said Julie Miller, who has worked with Bean under her father, S. Dillon Ripley, former head of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

Bean's efforts will be coordinated under the auspices of The Swannery, his not-for-profit foundation devoted to restoring the trumpeters to their former region. The foundation will one day find a physical home on a 54 acre quarry just north of Otisco Lake. Fifteen years ago, the area was a wetland that has since dried up due to the breaching of the dam that kept its water from flowing back to the lake.

“It was very, very pretty, and I think one day it can be again, and useful,” Bean said.

By reconstructing the dam, reflooding the marsh and building an observation center nearby, Bean will provide trumpeter swans with a new preserve in the area where they will learn to live as their ancestors once did. The swans will also be heavily guarded against the diseases carried by other fowl.

The base of knowledge Bean can build with the refuge will also teach the U.S. Fish and Wildlife much about a waterfowl species whose behavior they do not completely comprehend.

“They've backed away from (trumpeter) restorations because their methods weren't well-researched,” Bean said. “And if you don't get their behavior, it's difficult.”

The bird flu scare of recent years hampered Bean's project by frightening potential sponsors from investing in the reserve. But Bean believes that the danger of the swans spreading the disease is dwarfed by their function as warning signs in the event of a bird flu outbreak.

“They're environmental sensors; people don't notice as much if the small birds are dying,” Bean said.

Since the bird flu scare subsided, Bean's project has picked up steam. Once he obtains the $200,000 he estimates he will need to establish the refuge, Bean will be closer than ever to restoring the trumpeter population of central New York.

“When he finds something he wants to do, he'll continue to do it until it's completed to his utmost ability,” Miller said.

Bean's struggle to save the trumpeter swan can be traced to his childhood. While growing up on his parents' dairy farm in Auburn, Bean was surrounded by waterfowl like geese, ducks and swans.

“Most people like waterfowl because they're pretty; I'm fascinated by their behavior,” Bean said.

Bean's devotion to the trumpeter species took form during his time with S. Dillon Ripley. Following several years of studying the behavior of birds, Bean, then 22, wrote to Ripley about his interest in them. Ripley responded by inviting Bean to visit him in the nation's capital for a day of discussion, at the conclusion of which Ripley offered Bean a job.

Bean's new position running the Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Sanctuary took him to Litchfield, Conn. He also journeyed to the southern Siberia area of Russia to restore swan goose populations, but found his efforts were somewhat futile.

“They'd fly south over the border to China and be shot,” Bean said.

After returning from Russia two years ago, Bean set out to start a project that would give back to the area in which he was raised. Restoring the Atlantic trumpeter swan species provided him with the perfect quest.

“It's been 200 years. It's high time we put them back and did it correctly,” Bean said.

Staff writer David Wilcox can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net