Idaho approved a sandhill crane hunt last month to
appease farmers who are losing barley and potatoes to the birds.
The state plans to distribute 20 permits to shoot the lanky,
long-necked cranes this September, but it is not yet clear who will
do the killing.
State officials would like to use
the permits to dispatch birds that eat and trample crops. “We
really don’t want to have a sport hunt,” says Richard Meiers,
chairman of the state Fish and Game
Commission.
It will be a sport hunt or none at
all, according to the Pacific Flyway Council, which oversees
migratory bird hunts in the region. The council, composed of game
managers from 11 Western states, will allow the killing only if the
public carries it out.
Susan Weller of the Idaho
Audubon Council is leading a fight to stop the hunt altogether.
Weller says that there are other ways of compensating farmers or
keeping cranes away from crops, such as planting “lure crops’ to
draw cranes away from farmlands.
But Doyle DeKay,
who farms barley in southeast Idaho, says keeping cranes out of his
fields is “a full-time job.” He told the Idaho Post Register, “I’ve
got to the point where I hate them. I don’t like to be that way.”
*Greg Hanscom
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Crane hunt is contested.
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