Like his 16 flock mates, 733 represents the 2007 generation; one part of a huge effort to safeguard a species that we humans drove to the edge of extinction. Maybe the message is getting out to a larger audience, but certainly for us, this bird symbolizes optimism in a time when our environmental future is so uncertain - a time when none of us knows what we, as individuals, can do to slow the onset of global warming. With all the forecasts of catastrophic change, turning down our thermostats and recycling cans seems like such a tiny finger in such a large dike.

For us at least, trying to save Whooping cranes, or even one Whooping crane, is a way of atoning for our conservation sins. We are part of the generation that made the biggest mess of things. Our environmental indulgences will impact our children and their children, and this, for us, is a way of making amends, of cleaning up after ourselves - like making the bed before we leave. Based on the overwhelming support we have experienced here in Indiana and Kentucky it is not an uncommon sentiment