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EDUCATION CAMPAIGN AIMS AT WHOOPER DEATHS
WPR News - Education campaign aims at whooper deaths
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Wednesday October 26, 2011
by Chuck Quirmbach
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(Photos by
Chuck Quirmbach)
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(UNDATED) Wildlife officials have started an education campaign aimed at stopping people from killing whooping cranes.
The Fish and Wildlife Service says ten whooping cranes have been killed by gunfire during the last eleven years. That includes two birds in a non-migrating flock in Louisiana being shot earlier this month. The service is again circulating posters, asking people for information about crane deaths. In five cases, the perpetrators are unknown. Agency spokesman Tom Mackenzie says there's also a new education campaign.
Mackenzie concedes the campaign is low-budget, with a lot being done on the internet. He also says prosecutors have been reluctant to throw the book at juveniles who shot the other five cranes. John French is a U.S. Geological Survey researcher and member of a team overseeing an effort to raise the number of whoopers in the wild. He says the crane deaths are discouraging.
However, French says the bird deaths are not yet a fatal blow to crane reintroduction efforts in the eastern U.S. The government officials are not blaming hunters for shooting whooping cranes. Though it might appear accidental shootings could go up soon, if Kentucky starts a hunting season on sandhill cranes. Kentucky would be the first state east of the Mississippi in modern times to target sandhills.
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