INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Wildlife officials say the recent fatal shooting of an endangered whooping crane in rural Indiana is a sad reminder of the threat gunfire poses to North America’s tallest birds as the rare species recovers from a brush with extinction.

The 5-year-old female was found shot to death this month near a southwestern Indiana wildlife area that the white wading birds visit during migration.

It was a member of an eastern migratory population of about 100 whooping cranes painstakingly reintroduced by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the International Crane Foundation and other groups.

Lizzie Condon is the Crane Foundation’s whooping crane outreach coordinator. She says the crane’s killing was “particularly devastating” because it had just reached breeding age and hopes were high that it would successfully raise a chick this year.