Volunteers plant lotus to feed endangered white cranes

It's almost harvest season for lotus roots in Jiangxi province, but Zhou Haiyan, 46, has no plans to reap what she sowed: The roots are not for sale.

Zhou rented nearly 200,000 square meters of lotus field, waiting for the migration of Siberian white cranes, a species listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as critically endangered - one step away from extinction.

The species breeds in the Yakutia region of northeastern Siberia in Russia, and around 3,600 white cranes, around 98 percent of the total population, spend the winter in the Yangtze River Valley, especially in the wetlands around Poyang Lake, the biggest freshwater body in China.