Wisconsin Farmers Pay for Crane Damage as Hunting Bill Stalls
Wisconsin farmers face millions in losses from sandhill cranes, with a hunting bill awaiting approval to address the issue.
3 min read
When a sandhill crane walks through a newly planted Wisconsin cornfield, it isn’t admiring the rows—it’s digging up germinating kernels, turning a farmer’s seed bill into lunch. Around 200 Wisconsin farmers report crane conflicts have caused a reported loss of nearly $2 million. The issue has come to a head in state legislative hearings, where a proposed hunting bill has emerged as a potential solution.
Agricultural Struggles and Legislative Action
The proposal, the third attempt since 2012 to hunt the birds, has drawn attention from state lawmakers and farmers alike. The Joint Legislative Council introduced the bill earlier this year after a committee studied ways to manage cranes and related crop damage. Under the proposal, Wisconsin hunters would have the opportunity to hunt sandhill cranes, pending federal approval, and a new program would reimburse corn growers for up to 50% of the cost of a treatment used to repel birds.
The damage can be devastating for individual farms. Omro farmer Rick Gehrke explained that when cranes force a field to be replanted, the cost per acre jumps from about $150 to more than $300 after factoring in labor, fuel, seed, and the consequences of planting late. Farmers aren’t complaining about wildlife; they’re concerned about an increasingly successful population eating into already thin margins.
Wisconsin’s Conservation Success and Management Challenges
Wisconsin should be proud of the bird’s comeback. The Eastern population of sandhill cranes was nearly wiped out more than a century ago, and federal wildlife managers now describe it as a population that rebounded from near extirpation. However, the state’s hesitation to manage the recovered population has left farmers to bear the cost. Cranes cause the most damage in the spring, pulling newly planted corn from the ground, and Wisconsin Farmers Union notes that potatoes, peas, and other crops can also suffer losses.
Seed treatments such as Avipel can help, but someone still has to pay for them. Wisconsin policy makes the situation worse. Farmers generally can’t receive payments for sandhill crane crop losses through the state’s wildlife damage program unless the Department of Natural Resources authorizes a hunt. Since Wisconsin has no crane hunting season, farmers are stuck paying for damage caused by a bird the state has chosen not to manage through hunting.
Farmer Advocacy and Policy Challenges
Farm organizations aren’t pretending to solve every problem with a shotgun. Wisconsin Farm Bureau delegates adopted a 2026 policy calling for stronger crane management, including a spring season on farm fields, while also backing crop-damage relief and using repellents. Wisconsin Farmers Union pushed lawmakers to restore Avipel assistance and improve damage payments when legislators considered a hunting bill.
However, federal migratory-bird rules complicate the spring-season idea because a Wisconsin recreational season would fall later in the year. DeForest farmer Dave Mickelson made the practical point when lawmakers stripped farmer assistance from one version of the bill: don’t sell a fall hunt as the cure for damage occurring months earlier. The proposal would increase fees to hunters to pay for additional wildlife damage claims, but an amendment proposed by the committee’s chair, Sen. Rob Stafsholt, R-New Richmond, would scale back those fees and also remove funding to reimburse farmers for the cost of Avipel.
Source: PJ Media
