Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/03/22/state/n063853D43.DTL#ixzz1HLmFpAIN

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16prieto.html?_r=1

As reported before, Pinnacles National Monument's first wild-born California Condor chick in over 100 years had to be removed and taken to the LA Zoo to be treated for high lead levels. According to this month's San Francisco Bay Area National Parks Natural Resources and Science Update, the chick has adapted well to life at the zoo and is growing normally but it’s still too early to know if it will have permanent neurological impairment and behavioral problems. If it continues to do well, it will be evaluated next spring to see if it can eventually be returned to the wild with other captive-reared condors

The second and more important issue is, are we doing the right thing? Condor keeping takes a lot of money. A constant flow of money, in fact, since none of these populations are self-supporting. So, to justify spending all of that money, when money is tight everywhere, sometimes one will overstate an argument or position.

In fact, electrical towers DO kill condors (and eagles) at least until folks figured out how to modify them so their wings didn't touch the wrong wires simultaneously. Condors eating garbage IS a problem, and why despite condor eggs being laid and chicks getting hatched, there have been no fledges. Human habituation and the lack of educated condor adults in the wild is also a huge problem…if you live for 50 years, you must learn something valuable over those decades. And what you learn must then get passed down to your offspring so that they, too, can survive. But as it stands now, at any crisis, the birds get pulled back into captivity. Got forest fire? Come on home, boys!

This does not create a wild flock; it creates a tame, micro-managed flock that may never be able to survive on its own.

Are they beautiful to see in the wild? You bet. But they are numbered, patagial-tagged and radio-tagged within an inch of their lives.

By no means are these wild birds. When I saw a flock at Big Sur, they waddled over to a few feet away…I swear to god I coulda tucked one of those big suckers under my arm and carted it off…if I didn't mind a little condor vomit on my tennies.

The point made about the Pleistocene is not that some of the mammals and birds survived to this day, but that the MEGAFAUNA, upon which these birds depended, has died out. Dude, where are my Giant Sloths? And Giant Beavers? Mastodons? Mammoths?…well, you get the picture. The condors are indeed a relict species, designed for a different time. Their populations were low even before the advent of human hunters and lead bullets.

I was around when the original discussion raged over whether to bring them in to captivity or leave them (no doubt to die off) in the wild. The captive breeders won that round, the birds were brought in, and then thoroughly and tragically habituated to humans.

Sure, it was a last ditch effort, but badly managed. And now, no teachers left in the wild to show them how to do it right. Does it stress the birds to capture and handle them constantly? Judging from the work that I have done with wildlife, I would say yes, and if you work with them, then I'll bet that you would say yes, too.

These birds are fed by humans, managed by humans and maybe someday, for good or for ill, left in peace by humans.

It is not wrong to ask these questions and look hard at the answers. What we do here may not be what's best for the BIRDS, unless half-tame but hugely and expensively micro-managed wildlife is your thing. And in the end, perhaps, all for nothing.

There is a parallel here with the whooping cranes. God knows I love those birds. I have observed them in the wild and worked with them in captivity, and I have seen introduced birds and the original wild flock from Arkansas and the two populations are worlds apart in behavior and survival. Reintroduction isn't working. It makes for some charming video when youngsters follow a light plane, but those birds are not wild. Nests are being predated or the birds themselves are getting eaten by predators like raccoons; expensive raccoon food. When I visited the introduced Florida flock several years ago, they fed from grain hoppers, like big white turkeys, again with those damned bands and one bird dangled a broken leg because of them. Another was found dead the same day of unknown causes.

Locals had birds coming up to their houses and pecking at their own reflections on their screen doors. Those are not wild birds, either.

Better to preserve what we have, birds or mammals already in the wild and truly wild, then attempt to recreate some sort of ersatz wildlife experience by propping up a dying species, especially through reintroductions that really don't seem to work, and at great expense to both humans and the species we are trying to save.

You can't go home again, brothers and sisters.

Debbie Viess

For more on this story, check out:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_14833984?nclick_check=1

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/10/BAV01CD6K6.DTL&tsp=1

http://www.nps.gov/pinn/naturescience/condors.htm

For more information see:
http://www.nps.gov/pinn/naturescience/condors.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/12/state/n125820D32.DTL&tsp=1