The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) recently announced citations in two separate whooping crane poaching incidents, both of which involved crawfish farms in Evangeline Parish. On April 13, the agency announced the citation on the latest poaching case in a press release.
“Agents first learned about a shot whooping crane on March 19 when biologists reported a lost signal on a whooping crane’s tracking collar,” explained an LDWF spokesperson. “The last known location of the crane was on a privately owned crawfish farm near Hwy. 106 between Bayou Chicot and Pine Prairie.”
The next day, LDWF agents located the deceased crane on the property. It showed pellet wounds consistent with having been shot with a shotgun. On March 21, the agency executed a search warrant and found a spent shell near where they had located the dead bird.
Michael Alaniz, a 49-year-old from Chicago, Illinois, soon admitted to illegally killing the crane. For violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, he faces fines of $400 to $950 and up to 120 days of incarceration. Additionally, Alaniz will be assessed “civil restitution” up to $15,000.
The case comes just months after another endangered whooping crane was also killed at a crawfish farm in Evangeline Parish; on February 28, LDFW agents cited Logan Q. Thrasher and Manuel Luis for poaching a whooping crane.
Whooping cranes, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, are widely considered one of the rarest species of birds in the world. The species was once on the brink of extinction, though today there are approximately 800 whooping cranes in three separate wild populations. Louisiana’s wild population is the result of a reintroduction effort that began in the state in 2011. While the population isn’t fully self-sustaining yet, the reintroduction effort has so far been successful.
“These two illegally shot and killed whooping cranes represented 2.5 percent of the non-migratory population of whooping cranes in Louisiana, which now stands at just under 80 individuals,” explains the LDWF. “Both whooping cranes were young males who had been hatched and reared in the wild. Wild hatched individuals are the ultimate goal of the whooping crane program and represent almost a year’s worth of effort for each of the whooping crane pairs that raised these birds. Losing these two whooping cranes is a serious setback to reaching a self-sustainable population in the state.”