(WTAQ) - Advocates for Wisconsin’s whooping cranes were not happy that an Indiana man and a teenager only got one year of probation for killing a crane in 2009.

The prosecutor in the case – Gregory Carter – said they tried to find out who should have received restitution, and that question was never answered. Also, Carter said a staff member from the US Fish and Wildlife Service was at every court hearing in the case, and that person never indicated that the cases were handled inappropriately.

Wade Bennett and a juvenile were each convicted in the shooting death of a Wisconsin whooping crane that was part of a long-running program to re-introduce the endangered species in the Eastern US.

The crane was the first in the program to successfully hatch a chick in the wild. Carter said his office learned the crane could have been worth 100-thousand dollars – and they deferred the issue of restitution to see if anyone could legitimately make a financial claim.