Periled Species : Man Fights for Life--of Animals

The researchers who are engaged in a last, desperate gamble to save the California condor by capturing the last three birds in the wild and placing them in captive breeding programs can take heart these days from news from across the continent.

On Tuesday, red wolves will return to the coastal lands near Roanoke Island in North Carolina for the first time in several hundred years.

Four pair of the sleek wolves bred in captivity at the Tacoma, Wash., zoo will be placed in isolation pens at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge near Norfolk for six months of acclimation before release next spring. The last 40 red wolves in the wild were taken into captivity a decade ago from a small remaining habitat in East Texas.

The red wolf program symbolizes the determination that scientists maintain in their ongoing and often frustrating battle to preserve, through captive breeding programs, thousands of endangered species, in most cases from the consequences of human encroachment on their habitat.

Array of Problems

In that battle, wildlife scientists confront a serious array of biological, financial and political problems. For every successful red wolf or whooping crane reintroduction, scientists can name the dusky seaside sparrow in Florida, or four species of birds on Guam, or lemurs on Madagascar that declined to extremely critical numbers or became extinct before rescue efforts could be mounted.

Even when organized programs are undertaken, it can require years, if not decades, to bring them to fruition, with no guarantee of success. The program to save whooping cranes began in 1956 but not until 1975 were the first captive-born birds ready for reintroduction into the wild.

Among the problems facing scientists:

--Endangered species programs are expensive, especially the costly biological studies to understand the breeding habits of threatened animals.

“It’s a horrible circumstance to be in, to sit and make a choice when you only have the money to save perhaps one out of four (endangered species),” said Donald Bruning, curator of birds at the New York Zoological Society and head of several international committees promoting preservation.

--Most funds must be raised through time-consuming private efforts that often hinge on public identification with or affection for a particular species.

Donald Lindburg, San Diego Zoological Society animal behaviorist, said: “The gorilla, the sable antelope, the cheetah--those animals with particular beauty or drama to the public--understandably will fare better in the world than some of the less spectacular, small, drab-appearing animals, given diminishing resources.”

“As (particular animal) populations decline, it takes usually a public outcry before money is made available,” added James W. Carpenter, research veterinarian for endangered species research at the federal government’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md. Without strong fund raising for condor programs by Southern California zoological societies, Carpenter said, an active rescue program might not have taken place.

--Where few members of a species are left, such as with the condor or the black-footed ferret in Wyoming, problems of insufficient gene diversity complicate a recovery program. Too little genetic representation will result in generations of animals vulnerable to the same disease once they are released.

--Scientists, in trying to locate safe habitats, often encounter strong opposition ranging from Third World farmers wanting to clear forests for cultivation to commercial developers angry that an endangered species can stand in the way of a highway or condominium project.

Although it disappeared from the wild half a century ago, the Przewalski’s horse has been scientifically bred in large numbers in numerous zoos throughout the world. Now, biologists are wrestling with problems of locating a suitable refuge in Mongolia, the animal’s original home, where the horse would compete with domesticated animals for water sources.

With the midnight hour already approaching for the California condor, the species’ ultimate fate rests with specialists at the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos.

Three Condors in Wild

The last three condors still soaring over the southern San Joaquin Valley will be trapped this fall because their safety in nature can no longer be guaranteed. Scientists want additional government-protected refuges to protect condors from feeding on deer carcasses, which often contain lead bullet fragments extremely harmful to the predator birds. The last three condors will be added to the 24 birds in the two zoos in an effort to breed them and eventually release them back into the wild. So far, however, condors have never been bred in captivity.

Researchers try to rally more public support for their work by warning that continued species diversity--and especially their natural habitats--may be crucial to civilization’s own future.

“If a single animal such as the condor is suddenly gone, we do not suffer physically,” said Jesse Grantham, a senior National Audubon Society biologist. “But mentally, psychologically, we know that something is not right because the animal is not out there and that we have done something wrong. The driving force behind all preservation, whether a building or an art object or an animal, is to preserve its integrity.

“And our challenge is to preserve (as many of) the species in natural habitats.”

Ideally, biologists try to identify endangered species early enough that they do not have to resort to captive breeding.

“Naturally, you want the animal alive in its natural habitat rather than only in zoos because if you have to take it out of its habitat, the arguments for preserving the habitat tend to disappear,” said Jared Diamond, UCLA professor of physiology and a research associate specializing in animal ecology for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Some preservationists have cited that consequence in opposing trapping of the last three condors because developers eye much of the condor’s still-unspoiled range in Ventura and Kern counties.

“But if they are bound to die in the wild, it’s obviously much better to save it in a zoo (and plan for future reintroduction) than let them go extinct,” Diamond said.

The Przewalski’s horse and the Pere David’s deer have been in European and American zoos for more than a century even though extinct in their native habitats in Mongolia and China. “Would it not be good today if somehow we had a dinosaur in a zoo, even if extinct in nature, given all that could still be learned from it?” Diamond mused.

The red wolf benefited from federal studies of its plight dating from the 1950s, the willingness of Tacoma zoo officials to finance breeding in the 1970s, and the doggedness of field biologists in locating a safe area for reintroduction.

Known as the “wolf of the southeast” in Colonial days, the species ranged from the Atlantic seaboard to central Texas. Its gradual elimination from coastal areas as lands were cleared for agriculture turned rapid throughout its habitat after the Civil War. By the early 1970s, fewer than 100 were known to exist in a few isolated areas of East Texas and Arkansas.

In 1975, officials concluded that the wolf was so endangered from habitat destruction that its only hope was captive breeding and an eventual release program in a safer area. Over a five-year period, the last 40 wolves were taken from the wild to an isolated portion of Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo.

A more mixed rescue effort has occurred on the tiny island of Mauritius, 500 miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, where the famous dodo bird was eliminated by Portuguese explorers in the 18th Century in an early example of species eradication.

Ten years ago, the British-based International Council on Bird Preservation began a breeding program for the Mauritius kestrel, a beautiful bird that resembles a sparrow hawk. The island’s 2 million residents had steadily removed all but a narrow strip of native forests to plant sugar cane, and the kestrel’s numbers had declined to perhaps as few as 10, said Bruning of the New York Zoological Society. In addition, a non-native macaque (a type of monkey) introduced to the island was destroying the birds’ nests in remaining trees.

“At the time, the kestrel was considered to be the most endangered bird in the world,” Bruning said.

While attempting to save the kestrel in captivity, biologists recognized that the island’s pink pigeon population also was about to disappear due to habitat destruction. They began breeding them as well.

“If the kestrel had not been there, the pigeon might have well been overlooked until it was too late,” Bruning said, noting that, while attractive as pigeons go, the pink pigeon certainly is not spectacular.

The numbers of kestrels in the program are increasing slowly and may be released to a safe habitat in the near future, Bruning said. The pink pigeon has bred in captivity to the point where a group was placed in specially protected zoological gardens on Mauritius earlier this year. The numbers of both species still in unprotected areas of the island remain precarious, Bruning said.

And now a third bird on Mauritius--the echo parakeet--is on the brink of extinction. Of the 10 or so parakeets still thought to exist on the island, only two females are known, making a breeding program highly risky even if sufficient funds are found.

Similarly, on the Pacific island of Guam four species of birds were lost before biologists realized in the early 1980s that the tree-climbing brown snake, accidentally introduced to Guam from the Solomon Islands in 1946, was ravaging the native bird population. Two species were saved and are being bred at American zoos, but no plans exist to place them back on Guam until the snake problem is neutralized.

“There are going to be more and more crises as more and more habitat disappears,” Bruning said. “We’ve already lost a lot of species in the U.S.--the passenger pigeon, the Carolina parakeet, among others--but we’ve now got laws in place here. The real problems now are in the tropical forests of Asia, Africa and South America.”

Attempts Challenged

Some scientists question whether attempts should be made to save certain species, such as the condor. They argue that perhaps the evolutionary role of some animals has reached an end. “Maybe animals like the condor have simply petered out (from the standpoint of evolution) and (thus) they are so precarious concerning offspring,” said Warren Parker, the federal coordinator for the red wolf program.

But while others concede that numbers of the California condor and other species have been declining for many years, they protest that human actions have unquestionably hastened the problems.

“We are not God, and perhaps animals can adapt to new situations,” Bruning said. He said kestrels on Mauritius survived by nesting in cliffs after monkeys had destroyed most of their remaining tree habitats. “Take the condor: What kind of natural selection was going on before man intervened, like shooting the birds, and so forth? There could have been a group of condors feeding in a different manner (to enhance genetic survival) but man eliminated them.

“We are obligated to try in a positive way. If we can prolong existence of animals, their natural system of evolution might have a chance to take place.

“We’ll never save everything, but we have to do as much as we can.”