This is an interesting article based on the research of Mark Berres into the genetic diversity of different populations of eastern Sandhill Cranes.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
I would speculate that if you ranked the things that mattered to the kind of person that hunts cranes, genetic diversity, of anything at all, would not rate highly.
I did a paper on Sandhill Cranes last year and was very surprised to discover that people would shoot cranes or any other sort of bird. It’s crazy.
Hey Corey, this sounds like another great reason not to hunt the Eastern Sandhill Cranes, but like Duncan says, I don’t think hunters give a rat’s ass about biological diversity, nor probably does the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, nor the Republican congressmen representing the state of Wisconsin who have voted against every conservation issue raised in that state.
Read this statement on Wisconsin’s Senator Ron Johnson’s website regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline fiasco.
It’s just man showing how big and bad he is by shooting defenseless things. So sick of this kind of “Deliverance” senseless killing and for what?
Only a sick degenerate ahole would hunt and kill Sandhill Cranes. Hope an alligator bites off your tiny peckers.