The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is offering $5,000 for information that would help them catch the person who fatally shot an endangered whooping crane in Jefferson Davis Parish
“We recovered the crane on November 15th in Elton, we were able to do a necropsy on it and it was indeed killed with a gunshot wound,” said Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries spokesperson Adam Einck.
Anyone with information should call 1-800-442-2511
The $5,000 comes courtesy of $2,500 from LDWF, $1,000 each from the LDWF Operation Game Thief Program and Whooping Crane Conservation Association, and $500 from the International Crane Foundation.
“We do need some help so we have been able to get a pretty hefty reward if anyone has got any information that can lead to a conviction for this case,” says Einck.
Whooping cranes are the world’s most endangered crane species.
Einck says it’s a tragic killing of a native bird that is being reintroduced back into the state after a long hiatus. He says there are only an estimated 76 whooping cranes in Louisiana right now.
“They’re having a hard enough time surviving on their own, and it’s obviously against the law to shoot any of these birds so we just ask the public if they see one of these birds to admire it,” says Einck.
Whooping cranes disappeared from Louisiana in 1950 and were first reintroduced into the wild in 2011 from birds found in other states. This bird was released into the wild in 2018.
