Katrina's Environmental Impact

I linked to this last week on the front page of The Coffee Shop Times. When I think of sandhill cranes, I seem to remember that they are used to reintroduce endangered whooping cranes into the wild. I had no idea that a subspecies of sandhill crane numbers around 100 individuals in the wild--less than the 300 or so wild whooping cranes. Unlike other sandhill subspecies, this particular group doesn't migrate and calls a wildlife refuge in southern Mississippi home. And then came Katrina. The human population in that area is having a tough enough time dealing with post-Katrina conditions, so the overall health of the sandhill colony is not yet known.