The return of the sandhill crane to Wisconsin is a conservation success, but now the state must manage the population and the crop damage the birds can cause. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
The Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation is helping farmers in Wisconsin and across the country prevent crop failures caused by sandhill cranes, but it warns that a hunting season for the birds – a goal of pro-hunting groups in the state for years – will do little to curb the problem.
At a sparsely attended meeting Thursday night at the Fort Atkinson Public Library, Anne Lacy, director of the foundation’s Eastern Flyway Program, touted the benefits of a chemical compound called Avipel, which can be used to treat corn seeds to deter birds from eating the seeds. Lacy said the compound’s effectiveness has been proven for years, but noted that the remaining hurdle is getting the product into the hands of farmers and seed companies.
Sandhill cranes have been a regular topic among Wisconsin policymakers in recent years. In 2021, musician Ted Nugent appeared at a press conference at the state Capitol to push a bill that would allow a hunting season for the birds, which he called “ribeyes in the sky.” A similar bill was introduced in 2011.
This summer, a committee of inquiry chaired by MP Paul Tittl is considering policy options to control the birds and combat crop damage. At Thursday’s meeting, Lacy lamented that the committee’s first meeting focused exclusively on hunting – an attempted solution that she said would not solve farmers’ problems.
She said calls for hunting the birds were being pushed back by pro-hunting interests such as the Wisconsin
The Waterfowl Association is “taking advantage of farmers to get what they want, which is a hunting season, and the farmers would be left high and dry.”
At a meeting of the committee of inquiry earlier this month, Kent Van Horn, a retired migratory bird ecologist with the Department of Natural Resources, said that while allowing a hunt might make sense, it would not solve the problem of crop failure because its design is aimed at responsible control of the crane population.
“It’s designed to be sustainable, so the population in Wisconsin will not decline as a result of the introduction of a hunting season,” Van Horn told the committee.
The existence of sandhill cranes in Wisconsin is a conservation success story. Famed Wisconsin ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote about the birds in his 1948 book Marshland Elegy. In the 1930s, it was estimated that there were only 15 breeding pairs in the state. Today, an estimated 100,000 birds live in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada.
The cranes’ historic habitat of wetlands and prairies overlaps with the region in central Wisconsin where much of the state’s agricultural operations are conducted, putting the birds — which dig up and eat corn kernels after they’re planted and before they germinate — in conflict with farmers. Cranes, Lacy said, are also territorial, and pairs return to the same spots year after year to nest. It doesn’t help, she added, that the foals hatch around the same time in the spring that farmers plant their crops.
In 2022, Wisconsin agricultural producers reported an estimated $900,000 in crop damage from the birds (Lacy says this is likely an underestimate).
Farmers in Wisconsin already kill about 1,000 of the birds each year under federal permits to depredate them. But Lacy said the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not monitor whether those permits prevent damage. She said killing the birds can actually backfire on a farmer, because killing a pair claiming territory could open it up to a larger flock of individuals that would be even more destructive.
Lacy said Avipel, which replicates a chemical naturally occurring in plants to make them more bitter and less appetizing to birds, is the only solution that has proven effective — though she was sympathetic to the reluctance of farmers who fear another step in their planting process and higher costs. Avipel is classified by federal regulators as “virtually nontoxic” and is not absorbed by the plant, so has no effect on the harvested corn.
In birds, however, “this food is eliminated from their diet,” she said.
wisconsinexaminer.com
