Report suggests big increase in crane hunting

• Kentucky confirms at least six whooping cranes are in the state now.
• Whooping cranes sometimes mix with sandhill cranes%2C and with a sandhill crane hunting season opening on Saturday%2C state officials are warning hunters to be sure of their target.
• Hunters killed 87 sandhill cranes in Kentucky during last year%27s season%2C well below the cap of 400.

Kentucky biologists are recommending doubling the length of the state's sandhill crane hunting season while also warning hunters right now not to shoot their endangered cousins — the rare whooping cranes that have taken up temporary residence.

As the fourth season of hunting sandhill cranes is about to start on Saturday, Kentucky wildlife officials are reporting several whooping cranes in the state.

"Every crane up there is not a legal crane," said Mark Marraccini, spokesman with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

In a related matter, state biologists in a report to federal authorities have proposed extending the length of future sandhill crane hunting seasons to 60 days. The draft document also suggests a potential future harvest range of between 400 and 1,837 birds. This season's limit stays at 400.

So far, however, no more than 100 birds have been killed in each of the last three seasons.

That proposal drew quick criticism from Mary Walter Yandell with the Kentucky Coalition for Sandhill Cranes, which fought sandhill crane hunting.

Yandell called a longer season, which would need to be approved by federal officials and the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, "very bad" and that it would put even more whooping cranes at risk.

And Brainard Palmer-Ball, a board member of the Kentucky Ornithological Society, said at first he was alarmed by the potentially larger harvest numbers contained in report. He said it appears the recommendations are intended to give the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission flexibility in setting hunting rules for sandhill cranes. But because the issue is so politically sensitive, he said he doesn't expect to see any proposals for expanded crane hunting to gain traction.

Changing crane hunting regulations would require approval of the commission and the General Assembly, and given how contentious the crane-hunt debate was a few years ago, "I am pretty sure they don't want to have to do that again," he said.

For their part, state officials on Thursday insisted they don't envision a bigger harvest.

John H. Brunjes, a wildlife biologist with the state's Migratory Bird Program, said the draft recommendations that indicated a possible harvest increase were poorly worded and are likely to be changed. He said there was "never the intent" from agency staff to recommend a higher harvest number, while acknowledging the report's recommendations "may not read that way."

As for this year's sandhill season, state officials are reminding hunters to be certain of their targets, even though they previously didn't expect many whoopers to be the state this time of year.

When the state first established its controversial month-long sandhill crane season three years ago — the first in the Eastern United States — officials said a mid-December opening would allow the hunt to occur after most of the endangered whooping cranes had migrated through Kentucky.

But nature doesn't always cooperate, and this week, state officials said five federally protected whooping cranes have been seen in Hopkins County and a sixth in Barren County. One of them has since flown out of the state, Brunges said. In addition to these confirmed reports, whooping cranes have been observed in more than a dozen counties across Kentucky the last two weeks, the state agency said.

MORE: Whooping Cranes Confirmed in Kentucky

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have described the much larger whooping cranes to be the most endangered of all of the world's crane species, with less than 500 living in the wild in the United States.

Yandell said she's pleased the state is reminding people not to shoot whooping cranes during the sandhill season.

Too often in recent years, whooping cranes have been shot and killed in the eastern United States, she said. "People need more education," she added.

The Eastern population of about 100 whoopers migrates between Wisconsin and Florida, passing through west-central Kentucky. Last year, Kentucky had several of them wintering in the commonwealth.

A mated pair of whooping cranes was shot and killed in November 2013 in Western Kentucky, about a month before Kentucky's sandhill season opened. Marraccini said those shootings were with a rifle, not the typical shotgun used by crane hunters, and were done by "poachings," not hunters.

Authorities have not made any arrests, he said.

Biologists say that the sandhill cranes — whose fossil record in America goes back millions of years — were nearly wiped out in the 18th and 19th centuries. The federal government banned hunting of them from 1916 to 1961. They are known for their prehistoric call, which Aldo Leopold, the father of wildlife biology, once described as "the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution." Some hunters call them "rib-eye in the sky."

Kentucky allows 400 crane hunters, and each much pass a crane identification test. It limits the harvest at 400 birds, and so far, hunters have fallen short of that cap in each of the first three seasons: 50 in the season that started in December 2011, 92 in 2012 and 87 in 2013.

Last season, sandhill cranes were taken in Barren, Hardin, LaRue, Todd, Allen and Adair counties, state officials said.

After a contentious public debate, Kentucky was authorized to allow the hunt for three years on an experimental basis. Federal officials last summer extended the experiment for another year, while Kentucky officials work on report on the future of the hunt, Marraccini said.

That report includes the recommendation for a longer season and the potential harvest of 1,837 sandhill cranes yearly, without hurting the population. Each hunter can take two cranes now, and Brunjes said biologists are discussing allowing each hunter more permits, but still with an overall cap of 400.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 2014 Status and Harvests of Sandhill Cranes report showed a minimum Eastern sandhill crane population at 64,332 in 2013, down from 87,796 the previous year, but up from 49,666 in 2010. Overall, the agency says, the population has increased about 4 percent a year since 1979.

Tennessee allowed sandhill crane hunting for the first time in a season that ran from Nov. 28, 2013, to Jan. 1, 2014. There, 400 permitted hunters took 350 cranes, the report said.

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers.

The difference

•Whooping cranes are solid white with black wingtips. They have a red crown. Juveniles are similar to adults, but will have patches of brown or tan mixed in with the white.

•Adults may have a wingspan of 7.5 feet and stand up to 5 feet tall on stilted legs.

•Both adult and juvenile whooping cranes are currently in Kentucky.

•Sandhill cranes have gray bodies and are smaller.

Source: Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.