Jane Goodall, Jimmy Carter Speak Out Against Crane Hunting

An August 13, 2013 story in the Tennessee Tribune had an arresting headline: My jaw dropped when I read it. 

Jane Goodall and Jimmy Carter Join Advocates in Opposing Crane Hunting

Photo by Cynthia Routledge

Whoo! This is BIG. 

It's one thing for someone like me to make a fuss about crane hunting. But when a former president and the world's most eminent primatologist/conservationist speak out, people sit up and listen.

And yet, it makes so much sense that Dr. Goodall and President Carter would oppose a crane hunt. 

Tennessee is the midpoint in the migratory path of eastern whooping cranes from Wisconsin to Florida, and is one of the best places to see these towering, critically endangered white birds. 

President Carter wrote a letter to the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission, saying: 

“I am an avid hunter of quail, dove, turkey, geese, ducks, and other game fowl, but have for years been a strong vocal and financial supporter of the effort to protect Whooping Cranes and to reestablish the flock that flies over our farm in southwestern Georgia – and also over parts of Tennessee. I understand that your commission is contemplating opening hunting for Sandhill Cranes in Tennessee, and it is obvious that this will make it highly likely that Whooping Cranes might also be killed.”

Why not shoot the mottled one? It's a little different...

Juvenile whooping crane feeding with sandhills. Photo by Cynthia Routledge

To me, the voice of an avid hunter, coming out against hunting sandhill cranes, carries even more weight than that of an average citizen. When he's a former president who happens to be a birder and conservationist, it would behoove TFWC to listen hard.


A full 62% of Tennesseans oppose hunting sandhill cranes. Why, then, would TFWC try to push this unpopular hunt through, the way Kentucky did? I've made the point in past blogposts that sandhill cranes are worth infinitely more alive than dead. Just ask the director of the Lillian Annette Rowe Sanctuary on Nebraska's Platte River, where sandhill crane tourism brings 15,000 visitors from all 50 states and 46 foreign countries; brings more than $10 million into the local economy of Kearney, Nebraska every year. All without firing a single shot. 

A typical roost gathering, as viewed from a blind. Photo by Cynthia Routledge.

Jane Goodall wrote this in a letter to TFWC:

“For many, cranes are symbols of peace, a message they carry around the world. The idea that these birds could be hunted for sport is distressing to me, and would be to many others...It is clear that the Sandhills foraging and roosting in freedom during their stay in Tennessee, attracting visitors to view them and other local species, offer a good deal more all round than if hunters are permitted to kill them.”

It feels good to know that Jane Goodall and Jimmy Carter are behind those of us who think a sandhill crane hunt is at best ill-advised and at worst obscene. This isn't about controlling crane populations. It's more about putting something new and different on Tennessee's menu of shootable wildlife. Well, the majority of Tennesseans, and a lot of hunters, think sandhill cranes make very poor game birds. If just 39% of nests raise just one colt per year, a pressing need for population control is hardly the driving force behind this hunt. 

photo courtesy International Crane Foundation

In fact, population growth has stopped in seven out of eight Wisconsin nesting areas, and crane nesting success is extremely poor in marginal habitats. High nest predation (cranes are ground nesters, vulnerable to coyotes, raccoons and foxes ) and high juvenile mortality take care of most cranes before they ever get a chance to grow up and make the flight south with their parents.

photo courtesy International Crane Foundation

 And TFWC is proposing to let people shoot into those tight-knit family groups, shattering longstanding pair bonds and making orphans of inexperienced crane colts.

Share this post; email, call or write TFWC; show up at the meeting in Knoxville on August 22 and 23, 2013; voice your opposition. Yes, the "official" deadline for comments has come and gone, but that doesn't stop us from making our concerns known. Here are some contacts:

Governor Bill Haslam
State Capitol
Nashville, TN 37243
Business: (615) 741-2001 
Email: Bill.haslam@tn.gov

Ed Carter, TWRA Director Ellington Agricultural Ctr.

PO Box 40747

Nashville, TN 37207
  615-781-6552 Email:ed.carter@tn.gov 

  

Dr. Jeff McMillin (2012-2017), TFWC Chairman  (Statewide)
 1705 Edgemont Avenue
Bristol, TN 37620-4307


jeff.mcmillin@tn.gov

(423) 968-1933 

Thanks to Cyndi Routledge for her invaluable help with this fight and this post.

Sandhill Cranes Need Your Voice Now!

Saturday, August 10, is the deadline for receipt of comments on the proposed sandhill crane hunt in Tennessee.

If you'd like to know why it's a bad idea to shoot cranes in Tennessee, read this position statement by Jeb Barzen of Baraboo, Wisconsin's International Crane Foundation. Pretty eye-opening, and shocking.

My watercolor of a flock fired on near Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico

Studies of a color-banded population of sandhill cranes show that only 39% of nests manage to produce one chick yearly. That's not the kind of juvenile recruitment rate you need to sustain hunting. In fact, it's the lowest recruitment rate of any hunted species in North America. Furthermore, the proposal as stands offers to reduce hunting pressure only when the population has declined 30%. Current models indicate that this could be too late to prevent a death spiral for this new and fragile population.

Please send an email to TWRA's Executive Director Ed Carter at  ed.carter@tn.gov

and one to Jeff McMillin at  jeff.mcmillin@tn.gov

and one to the Tenn. Wildlife Resources Authority at  TWRA.Comment@tn.gov

In all your emails, put "Sandhill Crane" in the subject line. And let them know why you think hunting sandhill cranes is a bad idea.

No less than President Jimmy Carter and Jane Goodall have sent letters of protest. With thanks to the tireless activist Cyndi Routledge for bringing them on board. Here's my email:

Dear Mr. McMillin:

 I am writing to express my disapproval of the proposed hunt of sandhill cranes in Tennessee. I am a naturalist and author who has followed the eastern sandhill crane hunt proposals closely. The existing science does not indicate that hunting is a sustainable activity in this population, in which only 39% of nests have been shown to produce one young crane each year. This represents the lowest juvenile recruitment rate of any hunted species in North America. Furthermore, the hunt proposes curtailing harvest only after a 30% population decline, which could result in a crash from which populations may not recover. 

  Beyond the grave concern I have for populations as a whole, I strongly believe it is desirable to keep sandhill cranes in their current position as ambassadors of wild things and wild places for many thousands of appreciative observers. These birds are worth vastly more from an ecotourism standpoint alive and calling than dead in a muddy cornfield. My European and Middle Eastern ornithological colleagues recoil at the notion of huntingcranes of any species, referring to the pursuit as "obscene" and "absurd."

  I agree. And I join President Jimmy Carter and activist/behavioral scientist Jane Goodall in protesting the hunt. Please reconsider this proposal, which is based on shaky population estimates, incomplete science and an apparent desire to add an other, slightly exotic offering to the menu of huntable species in Tennessee. Just because there seem to be enough cranes to support a kill does not mean that we must or should. Bald eagles are rebounding, and have a considerably higher recruitment rate than cranes; shall we open season on them as well?

Sincerely,

Julie Zickefoose

Tennessee Sandhill Crane Hunt...Proposed Again

It's baaaack.

After a two-year moratorium, Tennessee is once again proposing a hunt on its wintering sandhill cranes.

The Eastern Flyway sandhill crane population has recovered from near extinction in the last 70 years—in our lifetime--and state game managers have taken notice. Their reasoning appears pretty simple: There are enough cranes around now to shoot some. My reasoning is simple too. Does that mean they must be shot? Is giving a small set of hunters one more bird species to aim at ultimately going to be worth the ill will and polarization of camps between the growing throngs of wildlife watchers and the shrinking ranks of hunters?  For the fact-checkers out there: The USFWS estimates that 33 states saw declines in hunting license sales over the last two decades. Massachusetts alone has seen a 50 percent falloff in hunting license sales in that period. Yes, hunting is declining. Maybe if we offer more species that can be shot...

So let's follow this line of reasoning. There are enough cranes out there now to shoot some without causing another population crash. All right then. There are surely enough red-tailed hawks sitting along the nation's highways to shoot some of them. Robins? Those things are everywhere, and tasty, too. And come to think of it, new great blue heron rookeries are popping up all over the place. A little fishy-tasting, but with the right marinade...

photo by Cyndi Routledge

Ultimately, the proposal to hunt Tennessee’s sandhill cranes is about hubris. It’s about manipulating wild populations as we see fit, about tilting the balance of nature toward huntable species by feeding them artificial foods and encouraging them to hang around to provide us a little sport. Try as I might, I cannot cram the lanky four-foot length of a sandhill crane into the slot in my brain marked “Game Species.” They’re too tall, too graceful, too ancient and yes, much too magical. There goes my heart again. Head says: They reproduce too slowly,  producing one colt per year if they’re lucky. 

watercolor by JZ

 Ducks and geese can lay a dozen eggs; a crane lays two, and only one colt usually survives. That youngster is still heavily dependent on its parents for guidance in its first winter of life, and yet we’re proposing to let hunters shoot right into those family units. For sport. For fun. For food, maybe, if they have enough strong marinade.  Pretty gamey, I’m told. I intend never to find out for myself.

We should not be marinating the meat of sandhill cranes. We should be looking up at them alive and flying, our heads thrown back in wonder, gratitude and awe. We should be searching their cloud-gray numbers for the big white cranes who travel with them, and are at risk of being shot, their  precious genes squandered in the mud of a cornfield.

Photo by Vickie Henderson

In my view, the great irony in this whole proposal to hunt cranes is that the majority of people who are aware cranes exist feel exactly as I do, vastly outnumbering those who would like to take a shot at one. Note to Tennessee, Kentucky and Wisconsin: Those cranes you're proposing to shoot are everyone's cranes, not just yours. They may breed in Wisconsin and pass through the southern states, but they belong to everyone, and your proposal to let a small subset of hunters fire on them is not popular with the majority who want them left alone. You are shooting yourself in the foot.

People who believe strongly in their perceived right to hunt whatever they wish can be  persuasive in characterizing birders and wildlife watchers as soft-headed and silly for having an emotional connection to birds and animals, for being guided by heart and not head. I believe to my core that it is desirable to hold some species sacred. I feel that way about sandhill cranes because I have observed, from Nebraska to New Mexico, from Michigan to Ohio, that they are potent ambassadors for wild things and wild places to the many thousands of people who are moved by them. These are not necessarily birders, just ordinary people who are stirred by the sight and sound of cranes. Cranes, I submit, are worth infinitely more alive than dead. Just ask the director of the Lillian Annette Rowe Sanctuary on Nebraska's Platte River, where sandhill crane tourism brings 15,000 visitors from all 50 states and 46 foreign countries; brings more than $10 million into the local economy every year. All without firing a single shot. Wildlife watching is the fastest growing sector in tourism.

I'd love to do this experiment. Take 1,000 people who know what a sandhill crane is. What percentage of them do you think would want to bring one down with a gun? What percentage would simply want to watch one fly overhead? We haven't even begun to tap the tourism potential of live Eastern Flyway cranes, and states are already proposing to shoot them?

My Israeli friend Jonathan Meyrav, who was a founder of the Hula Valley Birding Festival, which celebrates the masses of common cranes which winter in Israel's strip of marshland, recoiled when I told him of American hunting seasons, existing and proposed, on cranes. "Absurd!" he said. 

Yes. Absurd. But real, and about to be rammed down our throats. We must make our objections known, quickly.

Here's what to do.

IMMEDIATE COMMENTS NEEDED!

Now is the time to express your opinion about the proposed Sandhill Crane hunt in Tennessee: 
Please, if you haven't already read OM CEO Joe Duff's Field Journal entry from July 24th regarding the proposed Sandhill Crane hunt in Tennessee.

1) The USFWS has posted the proposed rule for a Tennessee Sandhill season in the Federal Register. The Federal public comment period ends AUGUST 5, 2013.  Go to http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FWS-HQ-MB-2013-0057-0052, click on the blue "Comment Now" button and follow the instructions to submit comments on Docket No. FWS-HQ-MB-2013-0057.  (To read the section concerning Sandhill Cranes scroll down to #9 Sandhill Cranes)

2) On the state level, Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) is accepting comments until AUGUST 10, 2013. Email comments toTWRA.Comment@tn.gov (with the subject line "Sandhill Crane"), Ed Carter (ed.carter@tn.gov), TWRA Director,and/or Dr. Jeff McMillin (jeff.mcmillin@tn.gov), TFWC Chairman.  Letters may also be mailed to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, Attn. Sandhill Crane Hunt, P.O. Box 40747, Nashville TN 37204.  

If recommended by TWRA, a vote on the season by the TN Fish and Wildlife Commission will take place on August 22 and 23 in Knoxville, TN

For more information go to http://kyc4sandhillcranes.com/eastern-states/tennessee/

Thank you, and please spread the word!

I've borrowed this from Operation Migration's appeal. Thank you to all who are fighting this proposal, and thank you to all who act.

JZ

Bald Eagle Hunt!

Bald Eagle on the Missouri River, Montana

You know, I’ve been thinking about this whole dustup over hunting cranes in Tennessee and now Kentucky. And my thinking has come around 180 degrees from where it was. I get it now, I really do. I think it’s time to hunt Sandhill Cranes. And while we’re at it, I think it’s time to open a limited season on Bald Eagles. Look at the facts, lay your emotions aside and listen to reason—exactly the same reasoning that’s been so persuasive in convincing me that hunting cranes is the right thing to do.

1. We’ve always hunted Bald Eagles.

Bald Eagles were nearly exterminated from the Lower 48 by the mid 1970’s. There was a lot of hunting for Bald Eagles—it is traditionally a game species.  There was a bounty on them in Alaska from 1917 until 1952—up to $2 a head! Yes, they have been an endangered species for as long as most of us can recall, but remember, they were traditionally a hunted species. Now they’re off the red list and bouncing back into the black. The total population in the continental US has risen to around 100,000 individuals. In my home state, Bald Eagles are breeding in 35 Ohio counties. Soon, they may overrun available habitat.

2. Bald Eagles are doing well enough now to support a hunt.

Each Bald Eagle pair has the potential to produce 1.7 young per year. All regional populations have nest success >50% and are showing the productivity required to produce stable populations. So there will be an ample supply of young birds coming up for harvest.

3. Bald Eagles will provide a sporting challenge for hunters.

Bald Eagles are big and slow-flying, and they will readily come in to bait. Hunters don’t even need to use decoys. However they are wary and have famously sharp eyes, so bagging eagles will be a true sporting challenge for hunters. The Bald Eagle has the potential to be the Holy Grail of game birds.

4. Hunting eagles will not hurt, but enhance non-consumptive wildlife viewing opportunitites.

Many people like Bald Eagles—it’s almost as if they consider them sacred. These passive wildlife enthusiasts like to go places, especially in winter, to watch them. Having a hunting season on eagles won’t affect those opportunities. In fact, hunting eagles will enhance the birdwatchers’ viewing opportunities by concentrating the birds in places where they aren’t being shot at. Imagine big flocks of Bald Eagles massing on our wildlife refuges. Birder viewing opportunities will be even more spectacular.

5. We need to give hunters new opportunities and new species to hunt.

Many people similarly feel sentimental about Bald Eagles, what with their being the national symbol, but that is just an example of misplaced emotion. No bird species should be exempt from harvest. It’s our right to hunt whatever wildlife is abundant enough to support the harvest. We need to give hunters new opportunities to hunt.

6. People who protest our proposed hunt are trying to strip rights from the hunting public.

Anyone who protests this hunt is making an assault on the American way, on our right to harvest our native wildlife—a right that we have held since the first colonist fired a blunderbuss in what was to be America.

6. Bald Eagles are delicious.

Some people say Bald Eagle doesn’t taste good, but they probably have never tried it. Most people who’ve eaten eagle say it is delicious. With the right marinade, Bald Eagle is indistinguishable from a good New York strip steak. With a rapidly growing population exceeding 100,000 birds, Bald Eagle could easily become our National Dish.

So I hereby propose a season on Bald Eagles in Ohio, with the anticipation that many other states will follow suit. Let Ohio be the first to re-open a season on this traditionally hunted bird. Now that we’ve almost succeeded in pushing a Sandhill Crane hunt through in Kentucky, the sky’s the limit.

Now that I’ve got your attention, here’s the final action alert for the Kentucky Sandhill Crane hunt proposal.  I’ve already summarized some reasons NOT to hunt Sandhill Cranes in this post:

Last Gasp for Sandhill Cranes

ACTION ALERT:  The USFWS has published its intention to approve Kentucky’s Sandhill Crane hunting proposal. The final deadline for comments is FRIDAY, AUGUST 5. The USFWS isn’t accepting emails, but you CAN comment online. Here’s how to do it.

Go to regulations.gov

Click on Submit a Comment

Type or paste  FWS-R9-MB-2011-0014-0204  into the keyword box & click Search

This will bring up the regulation page. You want "Frameworks for Early Season Migratory Bird Regulations." Buried in the text at that link is the proposal to hunt Kentucky Sandhill Cranes, along with a bunch of duck hunting stuff. It's interesting to look at it, especially the USFWS' refutation of various organizations' concerns about hunting cranes, under Section 9: Sandhill Cranes. If you want to cut to the chase and get your comment in,  click on Submit a Comment at the far right of this regulation. The idea being, despite the done-deal tone they take in the "proposal," to let the USFWS know you're out there, too.

Write your comment in the box provided (2000 characters or less)

Do it by Friday, August 5, 2011.

Snail mailed letters make an impression, especially when there are piles of them. Send your polite, well-reasoned letter to:

 Attn: FWS-R9-MB-2011-0014

Division of Policy Directives Management

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services

4401 N. Fairfax Drive

MS 2042-PPM

Arlington, VA 22203

I sent mine today.

As always, thank you for caring and thank you for acting.  The petition to the USFWS to re-evaluate its proposal to hunt eastern sandhills now has 2,733 signatures. Go to the link above, make your comment; sign the petition if you haven't. Make your voice heard.

Kentucky's Crane Hunt

For those of you who've been following the drama unfolding in Kentucky regarding a sandhill crane hunt, there's bad news. An eight-member commission unanimously approved the hunt proposal in early June.  Which wasn't a surprise, since everyone on the commission is a hunter. Thousands of letters and emails of protest apparently fell on deaf ears. Not surprising, but certainly disappointing. Shooting could start as early as mid-December 2011.

However.

Kentucky's wildlife offices have been flooded with protests, whether written, telephoned or emailed. It's probably of little use to further bombard Commissioner Jon Gassett with your good letters. Go ahead and check out his company, Southern Wildlife Resources LLC .  Now, I don't know much about conflict of interest or what taxpayer-paid state employees should or shouldn't be doing on their own time, but it looks to me as if he's offering the same services his Department of Fish and Wildlife does, only for personal profit. Brokering land to hunters, hooking them up with guide services...all for a fee. It isn't hard even for a simple bird painter to divine that Commissioner Gassett stands to gain financially from a crane hunt in Kentucky. No wonder his state office answering machine has a message on it expounding on the delicious meat of the sandhill crane. No, let's not write any more letters to Dr. Gassett. That dog don't hunt. Or rather, he does.

How about writing the Governor? And how about taking a few minutes to do it now? Here's an easy, quick link to a comment form on Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear's web site. He'll be deciding on the proposal TODAY, June 15. Let's give him a respectful little burst of opposition, huh?

                                    http://www.governor.ky.gov/contact/contact.htm

Photo by Cyndi Routledge

 These birds belong to all of us, not just a few hundred gunmen. Why should they get to unilaterally decide that the sandhill crane will be a game bird in Kentucky? 

We must make our voices heard.

As always, thank you for caring. And especially for acting.

The Crane Battle Moves to Kentucky

I cropped off the heads, with their big grins. Hunters tell me it's not hard to get your daily limit with such a huge, slow-flying target. 

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled inspection of armadillo carcasses with this important action alert for wildlife enthusiasts everywhere.  MARCH 15, 2011 is the deadline for public comment on a proposal to hunt sandhill cranes in Kentucky. That's TOMORROW. If you wrote to Tennessee in the campaign this winter, you can cut and paste and change "Tennessee" to "Kentucky." If not, please read my letter, crib bits of it in your own words if you wish, avoiding overly sentimental or confrontational wording,  and politely email Mr. Gassett at this address:    jon.gassett@ky.gov


Copy your letter to FW_Suggestions@ky.gov


Do it now, please, for the cranes. We fought them back in Tennessee; there's a two-year stay on their proposal. We can fight them back in Kentucky, too. The Kentucky Ornithological Society and the Beckham Bird Club have both come out strongly against the hunting season.  Kentucky Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Jon Gassett has indicated that if enough people write in protest, the proposed hunting season--due to start this December-- will be reconsidered. Nobody owns these cranes--they're free for all to enjoy. If you think it's wrong to shoot them, please take the time to email Mr. Gassett. THANK YOU!

March 14, 2011

Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife 

Jon Gassett, Commissioner

 One Sportsman's Lane

 Frankfort, Kentucky 40601

Dear Mr. Gassett,

I am a writer, naturalist and artist with a special interest in human/bird interactions.

 For my new book, due out in 2012 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I’ve been researching sandhill crane hunting. The sandhill crane has the lowest recruitment rate (average number of young birds joining a population each season) of any bird now hunted in North America. Historic recruitment rates of all migratory sandhill crane populations range from 7.5% to a high of 11%.

 Since 1975, hunting in the Central Flyway has taken around 20,000 cranes annually (E.M. Martin, U.S. FWS report). This represents 6% of the estimated mid-continental spring population of 322,700 birds for the same two decades. Given the projected recruitment rate, harvesting 6% of the population each year in the US alone seems to me to be cutting it too close to the edge. Kills in Canada, Alaska and Mexico are not included in the count. What about all the other birds that die from inexperience, disease, natural predation and accidents? Further, the crane take in Mexico is a free-for-all: neither regulated nor recorded.

 Hunting sandhill cranes in Kentucky is a bad idea from a public relations standpoint, considering the growing cadre of birders and nature enthusiasts for whom cranes are a touchstone species. How can Kentucky possibly garner enough revenue from crane hunting to offset the outrage when birdwatchers find out that the cranes they love and travel to see are being shot? Hunting is on a steady downturn, and nonconsumptive wildlife pursuits are on a tremendous upswing. Nationwide, wildlife watchers now outspend hunters 6 to 1. The explosion in digital photography allows people to stalk wildlife without harming it. Initiating a hunting season on a large, charismatic species like a crane is no way to resuscitate hunting. It is, however, an excellent way to alienate nonconsumptive wildlife enthusiasts, and further polarize the camps.

 Texas and North Dakota together account for 88% of the total yearly kill of sandhill cranes. There is evidence that a unique Canadian prairie population of lesser sandhill cranes is being selectively wiped out, since they migrate over the most heavily hunted areas of Texas. It should go without saying that the incidental kill of endangered whooping cranes is an unacceptable cost of adding another state to the shooting gallery all along both species’ migration route. Of the Central Flyway states, Nebraska alone holds out in protecting the cranes, having proven by its longstanding Festival of the Cranes in Kearney that a crane is worth infinitely more alive and purring in the sky with its family than thudding, broken and bleeding, into a cornfield.  Just ask Bill Taddicken, director of the Lillian Annette Rowe Sanctuary on the Platte River in Kearney. Crane tourism brings that little town around $10 million each year in revenue, without a single shot being fired. 

Proposing a hunting season on a bird with that kind of ecotourism potential simply doesn't make sense. Giving a few hundred hunters something else to shoot, in my opinion, cannot be worth the blowback from tens of thousands of people who are willing to travel and spend just to watch the birds fly over.  Please reconsider this proposal, and consider taking a lesson from what happened in Tennessee. Letters and emails by the thousand poured into the commissioners' offices, protesting its crane hunting proposal. Even more telling, the support the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission was expecting from its hunting community simply never materialized. I've received letters and emails from a number of avid hunters who find the concept of shooting cranes repugnant. TWRC's response to the outcry was a two-year stay on the proposed season. I feel certain that, given Tennessee's 18-year track record of celebrating cranes in a tremendously successful festival, the opposition will only be stronger in 2013. I would encourage the the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife to take Tennessee's example as an indication that offering sandhill cranes for hunting will create far more public relations trouble than it's worth. 

Sincerely, 

Julie Zickefoose

Tennessee Tables Crane Hunt!

On Friday, January 21, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency voted to table the proposal to open season on sandhill cranes for two years. More than 100 people packed the Nashville hall to present hunting arguments both pro and con, but the con's carried the day, buoyed by the thousands of letters, emails, calls and comments received by TWRA since October. Remember my first post in October, when I told you TWRA Commissioner Michael Chase had received exactly one letter of dissent, from concerned Tennesseean Janet McKnight? You changed that.

photo by Vickie Henderson

The Tennesseean has an article about the meeting and the decision. The lack of good data about this eastern flyway crane population was central to the arguments against the hunt. In deciding against instituting a hunting season now, TWRA recognized that a hunt proposal perhaps partially based on one year's huge (and likely unrepeatable) apparent gain in crane numbers is premature. To recap, here are the crane counts for the past six years:

2006: 14,158
2007: 14,698
2008: 12,945
2009: 20,191
2010: 48,505

And this just in--the January 2011 count. Well, would you look at that: back down to an unprecendented low.

2011: 11,000

It's been cold and snowy in Tennessee this winter, and the low 2011 count likely means that many of the  cranes have pushed farther south. Midwinter counts can be misleading in both directions. A long-lived, slow-reproducing bird in which only 30% of nesting pairs manage to raise a single chick each year (or, to put it another, more sobering way, a species which raises an average of .33 chicks per pair per year) is not subject to sudden population explosions. It is, however, quite vulnerable to population crashes. We need to keep that in mind when we're putting it in the crosshairs.

photo by Vickie Henderson

Some biologists are now speculating that the freakishly high January 2010 count was the result of a weather event that froze all open water at Indiana's Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area, sending the cranes that normally winter there packing farther south to Tennessee. As many as 30,000 sandhill cranes may gather at the Indiana refuge in a big winter. And guess what?

As many as 30,000 people may come to see them at J-P in a single season--200 people per day. Sounds like a nice ratio: A crane for every human. But not... a crane in every pot. A flying, calling, purring crane, winging high overhead or stepping gracefully through the corn stubble.

Cranes will be flying, calling and purring, safe from gunshots, for at least two more years in Tennessee. They'll be drawing thousands of visitors to Hiwassee Refuge to enjoy them--and eat, bunk in hotels, and shop at local businesses while they're at it.

If crane enthusiasts, spearheaded by the Tennessee Ornithological Society's Melinda Welton and Vickie Henderson, have their way, they'll be safe for much longer than that. Vickie has drawn up a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take another look at its Management Plan for the Eastern Population of Sandhill Cranes. To take the provision for hunting seasons along the Eastern Flyway out of it, at least until more is known about this population's dynamics, movements, and reproductive viability.

Here's the petition site. Please, sign it.

 photo by Vickie Henderson

Tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that you don't want to see sandhill cranes gunned down in the Eastern Flyway.

photo by Vickie Henderson

Oh. And thank you for writing, calling, emailing, voting, signing. I think you know now that you've made a difference.

 Special thanks to Janet McKnight for first alerting this hermit to the proposal to hunt Tennessee's sandhill cranes.  Thanks to Gary Loucks , Melinda Welton, Vickie Henderson and Cyndi Lawrence Routledge for fighting the good fight on their own home turf. Never underestimate the power of uppity women (and men). We're going to need them--remember, this is just a reprieve in Tennessee. Kentucky's just proposed its own sandhill crane hunt and, not surprisingly, isn't accepting public comment. Well, that doesn't stop anyone from calling and writing their legislators, does it?  Here's one place to start.     

Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources

1 Sportsman's Lane

Frankfort, KY  40601 800-858-1549                

Remember, sign that petition.