I have a riddle for you, “What
sounds like a pterodactyl, and causes almost $300,000 in crop damage in
Wisconsin every year?” The answer:
Sandhill Cranes. Now, Sandhill cranes
are one of the most successful recovery stories in recent years. Hunting and habitat destruction pushed the
birds to the brick of extinction in the early 1900’s, but through coordinated conservation
efforts, they have made a major comeback.
The
problem with this comeback is that Sandhill cranes have quite an appetite, and
are perfectly equipped to pluck seeds right out of a farmer’s field. The cranes can walk right down a row in a
freshly planted field, and using their beak, pluck the seeds right out of the
ground, doing hundreds of thousands dollars in crop damage; none of which is
reimbursed by the state. Seed can be treated to deter cranes, for an average of
$8 damage per acre. Now this might not
seem like much, but if you figure the average farm is Wisconsin is around 200
acres, that’s $1600 a year per farm.
Farming is often not a very lucrative job, and a loss of $16,000 over 10
years is pretty significant.
Sandhill cranes are big birds, I’ve heard them referred to
as “T-bones of the sky” and I’d believe it.
They are big, and in my experience, not afraid of people. I have a road bike and have biked right past
cranes, no more than ten feet away, with no reaction from the cranes. I’ve heard stories of small planes being unable
to land at smaller airports because Sandhill cranes had camped out on the
runway.
For a couple years now, a proposed Sandhill Crane hunt has
been tossed around by the state government, with public opinion divided. One of the arguments I keep hearing against
the hunt is that hunters might mistake the Whooping Crane, which is protected,
for the Sandhill. A quick goggle search resulted in the images below. On the left, a whooping crane, on the right,
the Sandhill crane. I’m not a hunter,
but I am friends with a lot of hunters.
Most of the guys I know can identify ducks on the wing over what I
frankly consider to be a ridiculously long distance. I am pretty sure they could tell the
difference between these two birds.
Like I said, I don’t hunt, and I’m not a farmer, I have no
real reason to argue in either direction, but it seems to me that there are a
lot worse things that could happen than allowing a limited number of Sandhill
Cranes to be harvested. I would hope
that the cranes would learn to be more wary of people, and hopefully stop the
large congregations of cranes in fields that cause so much crop damage. If nothing else, it would placate a lot of
farmers if they knew that something was being done.
