The
California Condor is on the verge of extinction. There were
three individuals, all males, known to be living free in
late 1986. That was a drop from fifteen wild birds
(including five breeding pairs) known to have been present
in 1984. Twenty-one condors were also alive in captivity
toward the end of 1986. The species is a relic of the ice
ages; its preserved remains have been found in the La Brea
tar pits. With its giant relative Teratornis mettiami it
picked the bones of mammoths and American camels that had
expired in the ooze. Teratornis, even bigger than the condor
-- its 12-foot wingspread and 50-pound weight making it
perhaps the biggest bird ever to take to the air -- died out
long before Europeans arrived in North America. By 1492 the
condor was already retreating westward. Its bones were
discovered in Florida early on, and recently its former
presence in upper New York state was confirmed by Richard
Laub of the Buffalo Museum of Science and David Stedman of
the New York State Museum. When the '49ers were trekking to
California, the condor had retired behind the Rockies, and
it survived into the 20th century only in California and
Baja California. By World War II breeding
condors were limited to California's southern Sierra Nevada,
the Coast Range behind Santa Barbara, and the east-west
ranges (Tehachapi Mountains) that connect the two across the
southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. Considerably more
than sixty birds were alive then. Since that time, the
population has gradually declined. The causes of the
condor's plight are several: shooting by hunters, poisoning
with bait intended for coyotes, contamination of their food
with DDT, other pesticides and lead, egg collecting by
unscrupulous oologists, general harassment, food scarcity
(mammoths and camels no longer exist in California and
numbers of domestic stock are declining), and habitat
destruction. The question of how to save
the condors has been strongly debated in the conservation
community. A distinguished panel set up jointly by the
National Audubon Society and the American Ornithologists'
Union despaired of being able to save the species in the
wild. The panel was convinced that irresponsible hunters
would continue to shoot the condors, that the birds could
not be protected from pesticide contamination, and that
their habitat would continue to shrink and deteriorate. To
learn more of their biology, the panel recommended
initiation of a "hands-on" conservation program, including
capturing of most remaining adults, keeping them captive
long enough to determine their sex (by means of a simple
surgical procedure), and placing radio transmitters on them,
before releasing them. The centerpiece of the
program, which was adopted, was captive breeding. The single
egg normally laid in each nest would be removed (the female
will often lay a second) and the young condor would be
reared under laboratory conditions. The goal was to
establish a captive population that later could be used to
restock empty habitat. The program was challenged
by other conservationists for scientific, political,
esthetic, and ethical reasons. Would the interference with
the birds accelerate their decline? How much would the
additional knowledge of condor biology really help in
preserving them? Was enough known about captive breeding of
condors to assure the success of attempts to rear them in
the laboratory (the species has never been bred in
captivity)? If there were no condors left in the wild to
show the released birds where to forage and nest, would the
releases survive? Political activists wondered if a
successful captive breeding program would remove the
constraints on development of the condor's habitat The
presence of the giant birds protected an important habitat
containing many other valuable but less spectacular species.
And if the habitat disappeared, then there would be no place
to release captive-bred birds in the future. Other conservationists
claimed that it was the free-flying condor that should be
preserved, not a dreary zoo-bred captive. Naturalist Carl
Koford, perhaps the leading expert on the condor, claimed
that "Handling, marking and caging greatly diminish the
recreational value of wild condors." Nature writer Kenneth
Brower expressed a related viewpoint poetically: "Perhaps
feeding on ground squirrels, for a bird that once fed on
mastodons, is too steep a fall from glory. If it is time for
the condor to follow Teratornis, it should go unburdened by
radio transmitters." Opponents of the hands-on approach
preferred a naturalistic recovery plan designed by Koford
that involved improving the condors' environment-reducing
pesticide use, supplementing food supplies, improving
protection from hunters, and reducing competition from
Turkey Vultures and other abundant scavengers. We will never know whether
that approach would have worked, but it clearly would have
been a gigantic gamble. Even with an endangered species
listing, a wilderness refuge, and the involvement of more
biologists than there were condors, the birds were still
dying out. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the
California Fish and Game Commission chose the
interventionist approach, with early results that were
mixed. The population in captivity increased, while that in
the wild dwindled away. The last wild condor, a
seven-year-old male with the code name AC-9, was captured in
April, 1987. There are still plans to release condors back
into nature once their numbers have been increased, and by
late 1986 $9 million had been appropriated for acquisition
of a 13,000-acre tract of land containing critical condor
habitat. Unfortunately, in that same year analysis of a
smashed wild condor egg showed high levels of breakdown
products of DDT. In addition, in the vicinity of condor
habitat, hunters still leave behind bullet-riddled carcasses
that are a source of lead-poisoning. Urban areas are still
expanding, and oil and wind energy development is still
planned. Even if the captive breeding program is an
outstanding success, the prospects for reestablishing a
thriving wild population in southern California seem bleak.
It has been suggested that the Grand Canyon might be a more
suitable release area. The environment in that national park
can be closely controlled, and the condors could be readily
viewed by millions of people. It is an idea worth
considering if enough birds become available for release,
even though a Grand Canyon population would probably need
supplemental feeding of large animal carcasses on a regular
basis. Only time will tell, but the
condor case illuminates the importance of prominent
endangered organisms in helping with the most crucial of all
conservation tasks -- the protection of large tracts of
relatively undisturbed habitat. It also shows how difficult
decision-making becomes when it involves attempts to save
organisms on the brink of extinction. In this case the
controversy seriously split the conservation community, with
people dedicated to the condors' welfare taking
diametrically opposed views. But perhaps the most important
point to be made about the California Condor is one of Ken
Brower's: "When the vultures watching your civilization
begin dropping dead ... it is time to pause and wonder." We
would add "and to act." SEE: DDT
and Birds;
Conservation
of Raptors. Copyright
® 1988 by Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin, and Darryl
Wheye.