Hope for Condor Springs from Silence

In the world of ornithology, in the eyes of a bird watcher or from the perspective of the average person, there are few experiences as marvelous or as emotionally moving as a California condor in flight.

With a wingspan in excess of nine feet, those fantastic fliers can soar to heights of 7,000 to 9,000 feet above sea level and travel at speeds of more than 60 m.p.h.

For the next three to five years, the skies of California will be devoid of this magnificent spectacle, yet recent efforts by biologists have made positive steps to ensure that the California condor will again fly free.

On April 19, the last remaining California condor in the wild was captured on the Bittercreek Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Kern County.

The immediate fate of this bird, AC-9, was sealed: He would become one of 27 birds in the capture propagation program at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. It is through this captive propagation program that the future of the California condor will be decided. Only through captive propagation will this species avoid extinction.

It is ironic that AC-9 should be the last condor captured, since it was one of the first birds seen to hatch since the initiation of the current field program in 1980.

At its remote nest in Los Angeles County, observers watched this bird flying throughout the current range of the condor, from the Corizzo Plains in eastern San Luis Obispo County to the Blue Ridge roost site in northern Tulare County.

Up to this point, observations had been on a random basis with the bird being identified by photographs. But on Dec. 11, 1984, he was captured and fitted with radio transmitters, and from this point on our knowledge of this bird increased greatly.

In the winter of 1985, AC-9 spent much of his time in the northern part of the current condor range, up in the southern Sierras. In the late winter and early spring, he visited the Hudson Ranch (now the Bittercreek Wildlife Refuge) along with every other known condor in the wild population.

It was in the summer and early fall of 1985 that we learned how fast and far AC-9 could travel in a day, as he would cover 115 miles within two to three hours.

In the fall of 1985, we observed AC-9 in close association with AC-8, an adult female. During this time, a pair bond was formed, and in the winter if 1986, AC-9 fathered a chick, now named Nojoqui.

The contributions that AC-9 made to our study go far beyond the data obtained from his movements and behavior. It was due to this bird that contacts were made with a wide range of people, from ranchers to doctors, children to adults, paupers to millionaires, all with one common interest--the California condor.

The ranching community, on the whole, has been an outstanding contributor to the program. Smaller ranchers and large ranching corporations have allowed research and management work to be done on their property free of charge, in the hopes of saving the condor. In addition, two ranchers in the valley informed us of one dead condor and one sick condor. This data was critical to the understanding of mortality factors that were causing problems in the wild.

During the research work conducted on AC-9 and other condors, contacts were made with literally thousands of people that enabled us to spread the word of the problems facing condors and other species. We have seen the emotional gamut--from tears to laughter and cheers to stunned silence--that a wild creature could be so magnificent.

We have had observations so close that you could hear the wind whistling through the feathers. The days of working with both the people and the bird were the best of times.

In our travels with the condor, we have met with people so poor they had only the clothes on their backs, and from a freeway off-ramp we tracked with radio-telemetry equipment the movements of California condors.

On the other end of the scale, on a hilltop on Hudson Ranch in 1984, we had a picnic with 40 very influential people. As we drank wine and ate cheese, AC-9 emerged from the bottom of Bittercreek Canyon to give an aerial display that could only be described as unbelievable. His performance led to large sums of money being donated to the cause of conservation and endangered species research.

Growing up in the San Joaquin Valley, I had traveled California 166 to Maricopa to and from school from kindergarten through the 12th grade. As a child and a young man, I gazed upon those foothills for hours, never realizing their importance to a species I would come to love and admire. On Easter Sunday, after the net was fired and the bird was safely captured, the equipment gathered and the calls made, I began the trip once again.

My emotions ranged from happiness at having completed a hard and tedious task, to outright disgust and sickness at the caging of a wild animal.

I believe that, through these efforts, we have saved a species, and this species will again populate those foothills of the San Joaquin. But on the long trip home that day, those foothills emitted a silence that was deafening.