George Archibald of Baraboo, the pioneering researcher who has danced with cranes and traveled the world to protect them, is to receive the first $100,000 Indianapolis Prize today for his contributions to animal protection.

The award, to be given in Washington, is a recognition of Archibald's work in championing the world's 15 species of cranes -- 11 of which are considered threatened with extinction.

Archibald, who holds a doctorate from Cornell University, was described as a world-class charmer and visionary who melds science, diplomacy and utter devotion to the birds.

Organizers said the Indianapolis Prize is the largest international monetary award given to an individual for conservation of a single animal species.

"He is an extraordinarily persuasive individual," said Michael Crowther, president and chief executive officer of the Indianapolis Zoo, which is using start-up money from the Eli Lilly & Co. Foundation to fund the award. "Most scientists manage to detach themselves from what they are working on, but George doesn't, and he doesn't apologize for it."

Archibald is perhaps best known for striking up a mating dance with a female whooping crane in the 1980s to help stimulate her for artificial insemination. His dance with Tex got him onto "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."

Archibald, 60, said he would donate the award money to the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation, which he co-founded in 1973. The foundation has a staff of 42 and a $5 million yearly budget.

When contacted Saturday, Archibald was in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, leading members of the crane foundation on a trip to observe whooping cranes in their breeding grounds at Wood Buffalo National Park. Some 250 cranes spend their summers in the Canadian park and their winters in Texas.

The eastern flock is centered at central Wisconsin's Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. In June, two chicks hatched there -- the first time whooping cranes raised in captivity have reproduced in the wild.

"We were thrilled," Archibald said.

There is a growing crane population in North America, Western Europe and Japan.

In stable, prosperous economies, "there is room for wildlife," Archibald said. "But in contrast, if you have conflict, wars, starvation and overpopulation, your cranes aren't going to do very well."

He described a "crane drain" in Africa, where birds are being shot for food or captured and sold to zoos and the affluent.

He has visited Afghanistan, Cuba, Russia and the Demilitarized Zone of North and South Korea to help protect cranes.

Archibald, who stepped down from active management of the crane foundation in 2000, leads a World Conservation Union commission on crane survival.

Archibald spends much of this time on the Siberian crane. Some of the cranes winter in Iran, where Archibald is working with scientists and officials to push for more protections. The Canadian citizen does not have trouble getting visas, and he said that personal relationships, developed over four decades, trump political problems between Iran and the United States.

Businessman Terry Kohler, president of Windway Capital Corp. of Sheboygan and a longtime crane foundation supporter, said many environmentalists start with an attitude that is anti-business.

"That's one of George's strengths -- he doesn't come across as anti-anything," he said.

Stanley A. Temple, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who attended graduate school at Cornell with Archibald, remembered how Archibald persuaded the New York Zoological Society to let him use live cranes from its collection for his doctoral research on crane behavior.

"Here was this dirt-poor graduate student," Temple said. "It took some obvious chutzpah and charm to make this happen."