Tag: endangered birds

Legal Wrangling Over River Levels Continues

The fight between environmental and business interests on the Missouri River has created legal wrangling in two federal courts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:

Transcript

The fight between environmental and business interests on the Missouri
River
has created legal wrangling in two federal courts. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s
Tom Weber reports:


The controversy started when a federal judge in Washington recently
ordered
the U.S. Corps of Engineers to lower water levels on the Missouri
river.
That move would protect endangered birds and fish that risked losing
their
nests with the higher water levels.


The Corps told the judge, though, it intended to ignore that ruling
because of a
previous ruling in a Nebraska court. That ruling said water levels
should
be high enough to keep barge traffic moving on the lower Missouri.


The Washington judge scolded the Corps for refusing her order and ruled
the
agency in contempt. The Corps in turn asked the Nebraska judge to
modify
her ruling to allow it to avoid heavy fines for being in contempt.


But Wednesday… the Nebraska judge refused. The Corps is appealing
her
ruling.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tom Weber.

Whooping Cranes Land in Florida

A flock of endangered whooping cranes has successfully made it to wintering grounds in Florida. The birds were led by an ultralight plane and costumed handlers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A flock of endangered whooping cranes has successfully made it to wintering grounds in Florida. The birds were led by an ultra-light plane and costumed handlers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


In an effort to help the endangered whooping cranes establish a new migration route, wildlife experts trained the flock to follow an ultra-light plane. The migration started in Wisconsin with a flock of eight young whooping cranes. One refused to stay with the flock and ended up being driven in a van to Florida. One bird hit a power line and was killed. But six whooping cranes made the entire trip. Chuck Underwood with the National Fish and Wildlife Service says unlike previous trips with more cooperative Sandhill cranes, whooping cranes turned out to be extremely independent.


“It was a guess any given day which bird might decide to break off and do his own thing. So, that was a challenge all the way down.”


Wildlife managers say the birds will find their own way back to Wisconsin in the spring. Hopefully it will begin a regular migration pattern, the second of wild whooping cranes in North America.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.