NEW ORLEANS — The whooping crane — one of the world’s most endangered birds and one of the first animals on the U.S. endangered list — could be back in Louisiana’s wetlands as early as February under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal.
The long-legged birds with the distinctive call haven’t lived in the wild in Louisiana since 1950.
Under the plan, young birds would be released into a pen about 125 miles west of New Orleans in Louisiana’s bayou country after they are raised by people wearing shapeless white “crane suits.” It’s an area where whooping cranes once lived and raised young.
The birds will eventually be able to fly out but probably will remain in the area because whooping cranes must be taught to migrate, Bill Brooks, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this week.
“I’m excited. You can’t imagine,” said Mary Lynch Courville, whose federal biologist father, John J. Lynch, captured the last wild whooping crane alive in Louisiana and took it to join a Texas flock in 1950.
