[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 123 (Wednesday, September 25, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Page S9226]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CRANE CONSERVATION ACT OF 2002

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for 
S. 2847, which I recently joined as a cosponsor.
  Cranes, the tallest flying birds on Earth and among the most 
graceful, inhabit wide expanses of wetlands and grasslands and exert a 
charismatic appeal reflected in many cultures.
  Our Whooping Crane, the rarest of the world's cranes, is shared with 
Canada and has survived only because of close cooperation between the 
United States and Canada. If the species is to survive, however, those 
magnificent birds need more intensive conservation efforts. This bill 
would provide such help, all up and down the Mississippi River Flyway, 
while also applying our conservation techniques on behalf of nine more 
endangered species of cranes in Africa and Asia.
  This bill would support organizations with expertise in crane 
conservation by funding projects in areas such as habitat protection 
and restoration, research and monitoring of crane populations, 
community participation and outreach, and reintroduction of cranes to 
the wild. The projects will be asked to promote long-term conservation 
by eliciting matching funds from government agencies, local 
communities, NGOs or others in the private sector.
  Whether in Louisiana, elsewhere in the United States, or overseas, 
protecting cranes' ecosystems benefits thousands of other animal and 
plant species at the interface between aquatic and terrestrial 
habitats.
  Louisiana is important to cranes because of the spectacular wetlands 
along our southwest coast. Sandhill cranes, which had disappeared from 
the state, already have returned as a wintering species. In a natural 
area near New Orleans, the Audubon Nature Institute has established a 
Species Survival Center which is rearing the endangered Mississippi 
subspecies of the sandhill crane, for release in the Mississippi 
Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge near Biloxi. That Center also 
recently received eight Whooping Cranes and plans to expand to ten 
breeding pairs as the core of a plan to restore Whooping Cranes to 
Louisiana's coast.
  Funding would flow through a new ``Crane Conservation Fund'' in 
Interior's Multinational Species Conservation Fund. In covering cranes, 
this bill would for the first time provide such protection for a 
species of bird.
  I ask other Senators to join me in supporting the Crane Conservation 
Act of 2002.

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