"Each spring, formations of sandhill cranes crisscross the skies along Nebraska's Platte River in one of the last great migratory spectacles on the North American continent. From across the globe, tens of thousands of visitors gather to witness a land transformed, 'wild with birds.' But the central Platte River system is witness to even more than this wondrous annual event. It is also an abiding source of natural, agricultural, and economic life in...