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Four whooping cranes reared in Wisconsin were flown by private jet to Louisiana last week to help re-establish a population of non-migrating cranes in the southeastern United States.

A total of 14 cranes were flown to the White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area in southwestern Louisiana on Thursday.

The cranes had been raised at the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation and at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland.

Crane chicks were reintroduced in Louisiana starting in 2011 as a non-migrating population.

Since 2011, Wisconsin and Louisiana have had to divvy up the young cranes that are born in captivity and released into the wild.

It was the first time that whooping cranes had inhabited Louisiana since the 1950s, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The Louisiana whooping crane population now stands at 40.

The migrating population moving between Wisconsin and the South, as far as Florida, stood at 106 as of October, according to the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, a consortium founded to bring back the bird to the eastern U.S.

In all, there are about 450 whooping cranes, with many in a flock of migrating birds that fly between the Gulf Coast of Texas and northern Canada.

The Louisiana project started after public and private groups in Wisconsin struggled to establish a flock of migrating whooping cranes.

The work in Wisconsin started in 2001.

Federal authorities estimated the cost in July at more than $20 million in public and private funds.

The reintroduction efforts have been hamstrung by the cranes' inability as adults to produce chicks that fledge. The problem has been blamed on inexperience in parenting and the presence of black flies in nesting areas at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, northeast of Tomah.

The problems at Necedah prompted officials to introduce juvenile cranes farther east, at the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge and the White River Marsh State Wildlife Area, where black flies do not appear to be as much of a problem.

The cranes were flown to Louisiana by Sheboygan-based Windway Capital Corp. Windway's Terry and Mary Kohler have made substantial donations on behalf of whooping cranes and trumpeter swans over the years.