HOVERING ON THE EDGE OF EXISTENCE.

The article focuses on the sandhill crane in Mississippi which has become an endangered specie. Captive breeding and a special refuge had begun to revive the Mississippi River to revive the Mississippi sandhill crane, which has almost become extinct. Biologists have long feared that a single catastrophe, such as Katrina, might wipe out this sole surviving population of wild Mississippi sandhill cranes, rarest of six sandhill crane subspecies. A plan during the mid-1970s to cut Interstate 10 across Mississippi and through the bird's last core habitat in the southeastern corner of the stale aroused the concern of Jacob Valentine, lauded in crane circles as the father of the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge. With the decline in natural habitat, the Mississippi sandhill crane imputation in the 1970s fell to fewer than 35 wild birds, giving the subspecies the dubious honor of being a charter member of the federal endangered species list. By 1975, the largest remaining tracts of natural pine savanna, and the few Mississippi cranes still left, survived only in the area that would become Jake Valentine's new refuge. INSET: A CRANE ALLY.