re: Whooping Crane Killed in Indiana

Flatbills are not limited to the south

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Why are whooping cranes important?

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Why are you important? There are over 7 billion more humans, why keep you?


Edit to add:

More on point, at least this is one of the birds from the nonessential/experimental migratory population. It terrible to rationalize like that, but the population that winters in Texas and breeds in Canada is the "more important" group of birds. But I love that they are back in Louisiana, and having our yearlong resident birds and that second migratory population of cranes is very important to long term conservation.

Won't go into a long discussion about it but everything has its place in earth even a damn cockroach. Once you lose a species, you never get it back. Whooping cranes are part of our natural heritage. I doubt we will ever see thousands of these things in Louisiana because there weren't that many in the flock to begin with but it's still worth protecting as are/were many other critters we have and see regularly. Hard to believe the American alligator was once endangered as well as the brown pelican. 60 years ago there was not one brown pelican in Louisiana and alligators were rare. Now look at what we have

Whoopers are also just one small piece of the whole marsh ecosystem that we are losing which benefits ducks, wading birds, and a host of other critters as well as helping with water quality

Similarly the black bear reintroduction helped with the loss of bottomland hardwoods There were tens of thousands of fields planted back in hardwoods and some of those are becoming forests now It was just one piece of the much bigger puzzle

Apparently I did go into a long discussion!

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I don't think that's going to win a lot of people over.

I fish regularly, and I pretty much never hunt, nor would I know a whooping crane if I saw one. Nor would I shoot it. But I've been with a few guys, especially as a teenager that might would have, just cause they liked to shoot.

If it's going to be a sin to ask a question, then don't be upset when folks choose to stay ignorant.

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Haha. You're right, but this question, to me, always seems to come from a place of "what do they do for humans to justify the money and effort spent to save them, and if they provide no direct benefit to humans why save them?" Not everything in nature requires a utilitarian benefit to humans to be of importance to the world.

Perhaps, that poster's question was out of genuine curiosity on Whooping Cranes and, if so, I apologize.

If you've heard of a Whooping Crane and see an adult in the wild, there aren't many other birds with which you can confuse it. They dwarf Sandhill Cranes side by side, and Sandhills are pretty obvious themselves. And I'm sure you know what herons and egrets look like, so I'm sure you could make a decent guess as to what a 5-6+ feet tall, white bird, that doesn't have the bill and head shape of a heron, is if you ever saw one.

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Because humans are more important than animals.

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Debatable. Besides humans are animals and are ipso facto not important (by your very statement).

But anywho, attempting to save a species, only native to North America, WE (as humans and Americans) drove to the doorstep of extinction seems like something we should strive for considering all the other species that have been lost over the centuries. Then there is always the environmental ethic if intrinsic value to consider (them being there and around is a value unto itself).

The woodpecker is the keystone that funds all the work for the land management on this land. 7 of the 10 biologist are woodcock biologist. If that isn't a keystone, I don't know what is...

I think you have your pecker and cock biologists mixed up.

I do not, I spent a day touring kisatchi with fed biologist, LDWF biologist and Army biologist looking at the property and the future plans

You called em woodcock biologists on accident