Reflections on a Sandhill Crane Hunt
I spent a day this fall clearing brush on an island in the Wisconsin River managed by the Aldo Leopold Foundation. This island is one of several used as a staging point for the fall sandhill crane migration. A few weeks later, my wife and I were able to spend an evening observing hundreds of cranes settle in for the night on similar island a short distance downstream. Observing the phenomenon from a beach just a stone’s throw from the Leopold shack was indeed moving.
Today, I came across an article from the Spartan Newsroom reflecting on efforts to initiate sandhill crane hunts in Michigan and Wisconsin. Interest in such a hunt has ebbed and wained over the past twenty years. It appears to be a bright and shining wedge issue driven home just in time to get political blood boiling for a mid-term election. This is no coincidence, it is a calculated and cynical effort to pit us against one another. Professional advocates and radical elements on either end of the political spectrum want to use sandhill cranes to bolster their careers by getting us to hate one another. It is even being used by an aging rock star desperate to maintain his relevance.
Sandhill Crane Hunt Background
The old saying goes, “You broke it; you bought it.” European settlers permanently altered the entire ecosystem in the Upper Great Lakes. Through overhunting and DDT we drove the numbers of sandhill cranes to near extinction. In the mid 1970s, my college roommate studied sandhills as the topic of his senior thesis. We spent many days cruising the wetlands and fields of the Kettle Moraine and south central Wisconsin. At that time there were though to be somewhere around 600 left. These birds were so secretive that researchers did not know where they nested or even how many eggs they laid.
After leaving the region for fifteen years in the 1980s, I returned to find sandhill cranes common on the landscape and beginning to become an agricultural pest. Their population growth puts them on course to becoming a problem species, like Canada geese. Nobody wants to see happen.
Wildlife biologists have the tools to manage sandhill populations. While not everything is known they know a great deal and will improve their management skills for the species as successive hunts provide additional data.
Taking Sides
Yes, we all love the esthetic value of cranes. Watching them is a joy, even as they heckle golfers on the fairway. But beauty and grace are not a substitute for ethical stewardship. Refusing to manage the population growth of sandhill cranes is itself irresponsible. By removing most top predators, we have screwed up the natural balance within the system. To pretend otherwise is ignorant at best and quite possibly disingenuous.
Using jackass statements like “ribeyes in the sky” echoes the calls market hunters who drove the species to near extinction. The only thing worse than doing nothing would be to repeat the fiasco that was the 2020-21 Wisconsin wolf hunt. Responsible conservation demands thoughtful decisions based on solid science. When politicians and rightwing provocateurs replace good science with knee jerk demands, nothing good can come of it.
Just a word about hunting groups and their role. Responsible conservation organizations have proven themselves reliable partners in wildlife conservation. Their tireless and thoughtful participation have allowed the broad range of game species to recover and thrive over the past century. these folks listen to scientists; while they generously volunteer their time and dig deep to financially support wildlife conservation. Politicians would do well to listen to their council when crafting policy for a sandhill crane hunt. It require care to separate these good faith actors from political mischief makers, who use hunting as a stalking horse.
In Closing
We need to adequately fund wildlife biologists to ask and answer the relevant questions. Those who manage the scientists and legislators who set policy have a solum responsibility to their constituents to listen and act on the science. A sustainable hunt is likely to be among the most valuable management tools available for longterm health of sandhill cranes. If Aldo Leopold and Winston Churchill taught us anything it is that while science may not have all the answers right now; like democracy, wildlife science is better than all the alternatives.
Your wrong! Sandhill cranes and all wildlife and all of nature is non political. They have no vote, we are to be stewards for all of them. It is a great saying of history ignore it, repeat it. Go take a hike or enjoy a crisp fall hunt in wisconsin. No passenger pigeons to be seen, not much native prairie, few whooping cranes, Low whitetail populations not many canus lupus. Native bird and tree and shrub population down. Large loss of habitat all over this state. We were lucky to bring so much back from the brink but have lost to much. Sandhill cranes remind us of a past forgotten time we have to have them teach us how to survive. Because if we fail them this time all of of lose, as we watch the last crane leave the ancient marsh.
There are two kinds of people in this world; those who believe there are only two kinds of people in this world and those who don’t.
First, nature is almost never absolute; it is the ultimate expression of 50 shades of gray. Yes, humans have extricated a huge number of species, either unconsciously or on purpose; maybe more than any other species (we have no way of knowing for sure). However, we have also successfully brought back many species or major populations from the brink, including the Great Lakes to Florida flyway of sandhill crane in Wisconsin.
Second, the difference between science and religion (or secular dogma). One is based on a static set of beliefs, while the other fully embraces its limited understanding and revels in the pursuit of better understanding. Nowhere is this better exemplified than the field if wildlife ecology. Aldo Leopold was a hunter and the first professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His views on management of various species evolved based on his own intellectual growth. This can be seen both in his understanding of red pines and gray wolves. While some interpret his Green Fire essay as expressing the opinion that no gray wolf should ever be hunted. However, a careful reading of all his work would reveal that he more likely meant that he, personally, could never hunt another wolf. He never said or implied that hunting itself should be removed an a wildlife management tool.
Finally, there is the Broken China principle which states, “You broke it, you bought it.” European settlers massively altered land use and ecology across the North American continent. We broke it first through agriculture, the urbanization. The webs of life that governed the various natural communities were shredded. The fact that you are responding to an online post is prima facia evidence that you have not turned your back on the modernity that brought about the decline of decline and near extinction of Sandhill Cranes. None of use is blameless, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of god.”
The true question is, “How do we pick up the broken pieces and make something new?” Time is unidirectional and as far as we mere mortals are concerned essentially uniform. As a person who spent several decades working as a restoration ecologist, I know all too well how few and scattered are the relics of intact natural communities. Likewise, I understand that we cannot “restore” ecosystems for which we have such fragmentary understanding and far less resources (money and trained people). We must, however, understand what pieces we have, what each of those pieces need to be successful. Our goal should be to create mosaics of broken china fragments that create sustainable natural communities alongside human activity. Anything else is dogmatic folly, doomed to failure.
A well managed crane hunt can, along with other tools such as paying farmers to plant crane resistant corn seed, and other yet to be discovered solutions, is the best solution for ensuring healthy sandhill crane populations into the future.
Broken China
Janice Carper
From No Place to Land (1992)
Passing by a window in a gift shop in Bandera
A shelf of tiny treasures caught my eye
Pretty little piece of old broken china
In jewelry setting made of silver and polished up to shine
I remembered when I broke my favorite old blue plate
Threw it away in pieces and I cried
I wish I would have known back then that it’s never too late
To take a good thing and revive it. I never even tried.
Chorus
Broken china – it’ll never be the same
But if you really love it you can bring it back again
Broken china – you can make it new
You’d be surprise what love can do.
…