Endangered whooping crane discovered shot to death | Crime

With only 540 whooping cranes left in the world, the loss of just one is significant. Investigators with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are looking into the death of a male whooping crane found dead at Weiss Lake in Cherokee County on Jan. 28. The investigators believe the six-year-old whooping crane, designated as 12-04, was shot to death.

“We are extremely disappointed by the killing of this whooping crane,” said Jim Gale, a special agent with the the Service’s southeast region. “We recently lost three whooping cranes to gunfire in south Georgia, now this one in Alabama. This senseless killing has just got to stop.”

A $6,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to a conviction and Gale is specifically asking the fishing, hunting and boating community to come forward with any information about who shot the crane. The reward for information about the three cranes killed in Calhoun County, GA is up to $20,800.

Crane #12-04 was raised at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin and learned how to migrate by following an Operation Migration ultralight aircraft. You can read more about him from his bio on the Journey North website.

For the past 10 years Operation Migration has led groups of seven to 20 cranes on their first migration from Wisconsin to Florida. 12-04 made his first migration to Florida during fall of 2004 and normally spent winters at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. Since 2009, the crane had wintered in the marshes in and around Weiss Lake. His movements were tracked by a transmitter and leg band. A forensics lab in Oregon is conducting a necropsy on the dead crane to further determine the cause of death.

Whooping cranes are protected by the Endangered Species Act, state laws and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

To report information about the crane’s death, contact Special Agent John Rawls at 334-285-9600 or e-mail him at john_rawls@fws.gov.