Last Days of Freedom Near for Condors : New Phase of Rescue Effort May Finally Settle Dispute Over Procedure

For California condors, the last days of free flight--at least for awhile--may be at hand. Biologists are in the process of trapping three of the six California condors left in the wild. Once captured, they will be taken to join the 21 condors at the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos.

By spring, many observers predict, there will be no condors left in the wild. The odds are that by then, one or more of the three birds will have died, most likely from poisoning, a gunshot wound or an accident. The others, if the California Fish and Game Commission has its way, will have been trapped and moved to a zoo for their own protection.

To David Phillips of Friends of the Earth, the caging of the last California condor will mean their “perpetual extinction” in the wild and the “failure” of the Condor Recovery Program--a result, he says, of “perhaps deliberate sabotage” by the zoos.

To Arthur Risser, curator of birds at the San Diego Zoo, the loss of even one condor this winter would be a “catastrophic and foolish” waste of resources that could have been averted by bringing all the birds into captivity now.

To the objective observer, the caging of the last condor may finally bring an end to the acrimony that has consistently characterized the recovery program and mark the beginning of a new phase of the program that should lead to a stable and viable population of condors both in the zoos and in the wild.

10-Foot Wingspan

The California condor, the object of the dispute, is one of the largest flying birds in the world. Adults typically weigh about 20 pounds and have a wingspan of nine to 10 feet. The birds, members of the vulture family, are normally black, except for their bald heads and a white lining underlying the wings.

At one time, the condor ranged over nearly all of western North America and as far east as Florida. Today, their habitat is restricted to approximately 11 million acres centered in Ventura and Kern counties.

In the past, the dispute between the warring camps might best been characterized in avian terms as, “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?”

Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have favored the “egg,” arguing that protecting the habitat of the condor is the most important aspect of the recovery program. If only the habitat is protected, they have contended, the birds will recover on their own.

The zoos, a growing number of biologists, and more recently the California Fish and Game Commission, have favored the “chicken.” So little is known about why condors in the wild have been dying, they argue, and so precarious is the birds’ hold on survival that the primary concern must be to move the birds into a protected environment. “We can worry about the habitat later,” said Risser.

That dispute is continuing, perhaps with more fervor than ever before, but the arguments may soon be moot because the egg is in imminent danger of being thoroughly scrambled. Over the last few years, an average of two condors have been lost in the wild each year. Last winter, six disappeared and no one knows what happened to them.

The odds thus seem high that one or more birds will be lost this winter also. Jan Riffe, the top wildlife official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the federal agency “is prepared to risk one, two, or even all three of the birds” to keep some condors in the wild. Already, however, the department is under a lot of pressure to bring all three birds in, he acknowledged, adding that the pressure is sure to grow if--or when--a bird is lost.

The debate centers on three issues: whether it will be possible to protect the habitat if there are no condors in the wild for any period of time; whether it is necessary to have “guide birds” in the wild to help newly released birds become acclimated; and whether the birds raised in the zoos have become too tame for successful release.

The first issue has been debated for several years, but the discussions have intensified recently because of proposals to acquire the Hudson Ranch in Kern County near the Ventura County border as part of a refuge for the birds. The U.S. Interior Department, of which the Fish and Wildlife Service is a part, has backed off from that purchase because of the growing likelihood that there may be no birds to inhabit it, at least for many years. No decision on the purchase is likely before next year.

Other locations are also endangered by encroachment.

Given Every Chance

“Even when the birds are out there,” according to John Borneman, regional representative of the Audubon Society, “it’s hard to convince local boards of supervisors that condors should be given every chance. If all of them are out of the wild, it’s going to be that much harder.”

“We have to have birds out there to ward off encroachment,” adds Riffe.

Risser of the San Diego Zoo counters that right now the habitat is simply too hazardous for the condors. “We don’t know what the problems are in the wild yet,” he said in an interview. “The only way we can learn is by finding dead birds, and we can no longer afford to do that. . . . Our guiding principle in everything we’ve done is that we can’t experiment with the California condors. We have to learn with other species.”

Risser and his colleagues would thus like to release perhaps a dozen female Andean condors into the Sespe Condor Sanctuary near Ojai to find out more about the habitat. The Andean condor is also considered endangered, but there are as many as 5,000 of them in South America.

Successfully Released

Zoo-raised Andean condors have been successfully released in the wild in Peru, and they would likely find California hospitable. “We could follow them closely and find out what the problems in the habitat are,” Risser said.

Those problems could then be rectified--and the Andean condors recaptured--before the California condors were rereleased. Some birds would undoubtedly die. “We hate to lose members of any endangered species,” Risser said, “but we can afford the Andean condors much better than the native ones.”

That proposition has also been opposed by the environmentalists for a variety of reasons. The most important of those reasons, however, is simply that they do not want the California condors removed from the wild.

The major argument in favor of that proposition, in turn, is that a successful release of zoo-raised condors will require the presence, and help, of condors already living in the wild. These birds would, in effect, show the new boys on the block how to get along in the wilderness. The old-timers would show the newcomers the best places to forage, the prime nesting areas, and so forth.

Dismisses Objection

Risser dismisses this objection out of hand. “The condor is an intelligent, adaptable bird that can make its own way in the world.” Besides, he added, “the condors that are there now have apparently picked up a lot of bad habits that are negative survival traits, like nesting near humans. I’m not at all sure we want the condors we release to learn anything from those in the wild.”

Riffe said that he was “astonished” when he first heard Mike Wallace of the San Diego Zoo make this argument and he disagrees “violently.” A “big majority of the experts,” he says, agree that the chances for successful rerelease are much better if there are guide birds. Experts from Friends of the Earth and the Audubon Society have echoed this conclusion.

Whether guide birds are available or not when zoo-raised birds are released, there is growing concern that the birds may be simply too tame to survive on their own. Some environmentalists, including Friends of the Earth’s Phillips, claim that the zoos have created this situation deliberately in order to preclude any release of the birds.

In a 1984 plan adopted by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Fish and Game Commission, five zoo-raised condors were scheduled for release in the spring of 1985. Those birds were being held in isolation at the Los Angeles Zoo to minimize contact with humans.

Hastily Shelved

That plan was hastily shelved when the six wild birds disappeared last winter. The newest plan now calls for release of three birds in the spring of 1986--assuming that there are still some birds in the wild.

When the 1985 release was shelved, however, “the Los Angeles Zoo took the five birds out of isolation and began feeding them by hand,” Phillips charged in a telephone interview. Now, he claims, the five “are totally dependent on humans and not suitable for release.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service subsequently examined the birds in zoos and decided that only two of the 21 are candidates for release. “Now they don’t have three to put back in in 1986,” Phillips concluded.

Michael Scott, director of the Condor Research Center in Ventura, is planning to examine the birds again soon. He hopes that it may be possible to “de-tame” some or all of them. Unlike Phillips, however, he does not believe that the zoos acted deliberately; he thinks that a certain amount of interaction between birds and humans is inevitable in a zoo environment.

May Be Overblown

Regardless of motives, this dispute may be overblown, according to William Toone of the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Work with the Andean condors, he argues, indicates that tameness is not a problem.

Andean condors have been raised under three different types of conditions by Mike Wallace of the zoo, Toone said in an interview. One group was fed and handled by humans; a second group was fed with hand puppets and segregated from humans, and a third group was raised by the parents themselves in complete isolation.

When individuals from each of the groups were released into the wild, Toone said, “the birds fed by hand adapted slightly more slowly, but all three groups made a good transition.” Scott agrees with Toone’s assessment, but Riffe is more pessimistic. He said that the Fish and Wildlife Service has ordered the zoo to “rehabilitate” the California birds, but he is not confident they will be successful.

While all this dispute is raging around them, scientists are working intensively to increase the total number of birds available. One way to do this is with a technique called multiple clutching, in which the birds are induced to produce more eggs than normal.

Process Repeated

A breeding pair would normally be expected to produce one egg--and one chick--every two years. If that egg is removed soon after it is laid, however, the pair will produce a second one the same year. If the second egg is also removed, they may produce a third. This process can be repeated each year.

In this manner, scientists have collected a total of 15 eggs from the wild since 1983. California condors have never been bred in zoos, Risser noted, but that may simply be because the zoos have not had birds of the right age. The closely related Andean condors breed easily in captivity.

Three of the 15 eggs have not been viable. One of the 12 chicks that hatched was born with severe hydrocephaly, a birth defect, and did not survive, and two of the chicks have displayed developmental abnormalities. All three of the defective chicks came from the same breeding pair--which, by sad coincidence, is the only breeding pair now left in the wild.

Toone thinks the female of this pair has an infection in her ovaries that is producing the defects. He argues that this is another strong reason the birds should be captured.

New Breeding Pairs

Meanwhile, the biologists are trying to create new breeding pairs, but that will take time. Recently, Wallace and Los Angeles zoo biologists introduced Topa Topa, a 16-year-old condor that has spent most of its life in captivity and had never previously met a female condor, to an 11-year-old captured bird that they think is female.

If all goes well, an egg could be produced from this mating as early as February. All the scientists agree that it is very important to mate Topa Topa because he is the last survivor of his genetic line. It is exceptionally important to get his genes into the already small genetic pool of the captive birds, said Marcia Hobbs of the Los Angeles zoo.

The San Diego Wild Animal Park has a 6-year-old male and a female from the wild that they hope will become a breeding pair. The condors typically do not mate until they are seven, however, so Toone does not expect an egg until 1987. Most of the other birds in captivity are 3 years old or younger, so they will not be able to mate for several years.

Even if the population can be built back up and the birds restored to the wild, Scott said, the California condor “will always be a highly managed species. We will have to provide food, nesting sites, and danger-free corridors.” This approach has been highly successful with the Hawaiian goose, he noted. Their numbers grew from 50 to 900 when this approach was adopted.

But this approach also requires a long commitment. When the program for the Hawaiian goose was halted, their numbers fell from 900 back to 200. “We don’t want that to happen to the condor,” Scott said: “We’re in this for the next 50 years.”