Road safety top priority during crane season

Mach  26, 2011.
By LORI POTTER and KIM SCHMIDT Hub Staff Writers 

KEARNEY — Wildlife isn’t the biggest hazard on rural roads during the migration of sandhill cranes and other waterfowl through south-central Nebraska.
The biggest worry for area residents and police are bird watchers who may pay too much attention to birds and not enough to driving safely.
The concerns include drivers who stop vehicles in the middle of a road, rather than pull over to the side or in a designated parking area, or those who miss or ignore driveways posted as private property.
In those situations, Nebraska State Patrol Capt. Chris Kolb of Grand Island said, bird watchers only become safety hazards. “They can’t let the view of the birds overwhelm their common sense,” he said.

Gene Hunt, the longtime superintendent at Fort Kearny State Recreation Area for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, said the main issue for his rural neighbors during sandhill crane season always has been traffic.
“I think that now people are better educated,” Hunt said. “They don’t stop in the middle of Highway 50A anymore.” However, visitors still may drive slowly down the rural highways and graveled roads or pull over with little notice.
Hunt said residents know better now what to expect than years ago when the interest in sandhill crane season was just beginning to grow. He said they accept the fact that in a few weeks, the cranes will continue their migration north and things will return to normal.

Darcy Olson, who farms and raises cattle on the south side of the river between the Fort Kearny and the National Audubon Society’s Rowe Sanctuary, said, “You just put up with them (crane watchers), I guess.”
He acknowledged the efforts made over the years to better educate visitors about respecting private property and following safety rules on the roads. He said those concerns may be getting better.
Kolb doesn’t mind if drivers pull off the road to view the birds. He just asks that they do it in a safe manner by pulling completely off the roadway and paved shoulder or into a designated parking area.

“The statutes don’t accommodate for parking on the shoulder to watch for cranes,” he said.
If bird watchers don’t completely pull off the roadway and shoulder, Kolb said they could face a variety of violations, from improper parking on a roadway to reckless driving if they were to cause a crash.
Designated bird watching sites are available at Rowe Sanctuary’s parking lot and a designated turn off about one mile to the west, at the Fort Kearny Recreation Area and its hike-bike trail bridge, and at the Central Platte Natural Resources District’s Plautz viewing site southeast of the Gibbon Platte River bridge.
Farmer and cattleman Dick Summers, who lives just east of Rowe Sanctuary, said, “Every once in a while you see someone stop in the middle of the bridge.”

Despite those moments of inattention to driving safety rules, Summers said that about 99 percent of people who come to his neighborhood to see the cranes cause no problems