The condor's last flight

...What were needed, he claimed, were not cages but comprehensive studies of the condor's life cycle, increased protection and enlargement of its habitat, and a thorough clean-up of its environment...

...So have the U.S...

...The artwork on the shirt features the image of a condor, that highrider of the warm California updraft, soaring in blissful majesty above the words "total extinction...

...The egg collectors have disappeared, but disturbance of condor nesting activities continues...

...if life is preserved only in a narrow legal sense, through the aid of a complex array of life-support systems...

...It is we who will come up short, for we will have lost two things that we covet very much: confidence in our ability to manage the affairs of the world, and condors...

...Can you preserve its wildness...

...Now gathering the rising air beneath its outstretched wings and banking its body to adjust for local thermal conditions, the condor will begin to climb skyward, slowly carving a great ascending spiral around the warm column of air...

...Nothing is quite so final as extinction, it is true...

...However well-intentioned it may be, isn't captive breeding yet another manifestation of our presumed right to manipulate all life on this planet for our own interests...

...They are not tame or inquisitive birds that perch dilatorily beside highways or search for food in suburban backyards...

...Its recovery plan for the condor proposes numerous remedial measures in addition to captive breeding—and those that do not involve capture should be implemented as soon as possible...

...The goal of the program, one that may take decades to achieve, will be to assemble a large population of cage-reared condors...

...Because of its huge wings, a condor can soar with an endurance and efficiency that is almost unknown among other birds...

...Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich bluntly characterizes the trapping of condors as "harassment...

...Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with the care of all officially endangered species, proposes to initiate a captive breeding program for condors...

...The condor's last flight Better a vanished species than a proud bird caged Robert Leonard Reid In the finest T-shirt tradition, the message emblazoned on the shirt-front summarizes a complex issue in a few simple words: "Nothing is quite so final as total extinction...

...Today the term is almost always used negatively and derisively, to describe nearly any opinion about animals with which the speaker disagrees...

...His fears were realized last June 30, when a two-month-old wild condor chick died after being removed from its nest for weighing and measuring by a member of the Condor Research Center, a team of scientists supported jointly by the National Audubon Society and the U.S...

...Fish and Wildlife Service...

...With a cage-bred animal, you may be able to preserve genes and cells and organs," Koford told me in an interview a few months before his death...

...Preventing the extinction of a species might further serve human interests by seeming to demonstrate the triumph of compassion, and possibly technology, over the grim forces of evolution...

...The evidence indicates that condors are very adaptable birds," Borneman answered...

...Today, following the emergence of the concept of "death with dignity," the issue is not so clear-cut...

...Since Rubin Fields happened onto the scene, the war on condors has continued almost unabated...

...Troubling as those losses may be to contemplate, we should recognize that we are to blame for bringing them dangerously close to realization...

...Koford argued that captive breeding would expose condors to a whole new set of uncertainties: Birds could be injured or traumatized during capture...

...The World Wildlife Fund, the International Council for Bird Preservation, the Cooper Ornithological Society, the New York Zoological Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution have all thrown their support behind the program...

...Then, a year later, nine of the birds will be recaptured and transported to breeding facilities in San Diego or Santa Cruz, California, where wildlife biologists will try to persuade condors to proliferate in cages, although the birds lately have shown little ability to do so in the wild...

...If death is prevented only for the benefit or comfort of despairing relatives...

...They do this voluntarily, thereby clearly demonstrating their aversion to disturbance...

...Surely one of the most important derives from the simple fact that animals give us pleasure, and the specter of extinction threatens that pleasure...

...In Koford's view, captive breeding was a classic example of the cure that is worse than the disease...

...One advantage of forgoing captive breeding would be that several million dollars now targeted for that phase of the recovery program could be redirected to effect an even more comprehensive environmental revitalization than is now feasible...

...and no means for averting that end may be quite so insensitive to the condor's needs as captive breeding...

...DDT has now been banned, but other potentially harmful chemicals, including an agricultural poison called Compound 1080, have not...

...But it won't be a tragedy for condors...

...Several hundred thousand acres of roadless lands in Los Padres National Forest could be set aside as officially protected "wilderness" by Congress...

...I wondered how the society could justify a solution to the condor's problems which would force the birds into close contact with people—something condors themselves have shown no taste for—and which furthermore would permanently deprive them of flight...

...So I put the question to John Borneman, who since 1965 has held the position of Condor Naturalist with the Audubon Society...

...This potential consequence of our choosing not to capture condors should be stated unequivocally and understood fully...

...Forest Service and the California Department of Fish and Game appointed condor wardens who could not identify condors when they saw them...

...This may be a result of such embarrassing and ill-begotten phenomena as beauty parlors for pets, hydrant-shaped dog snacks, and the talking, singing, and chow-chow-chowing cats featured in television commercials...

...if a patient is somehow denied a dignified death, then preventing that death may be wrong...

...Part of the answer has already been given by the U.S...

...Fish and Wildlife Service biologists are cautiously optimistic that captive propagation may be the key to the eventual establishment of a healthy, self-sustaining population of condors in the wild...

...Topa Topa [a condor that has lived in the Los Angeles Zoo since 1967] adapted to captivity very quickly...

...Several California condors have lived in cages for more than thirty years...

...Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management...

...Others have died in the name of higher learning: Today more than 200 skins or skeletons of California condors enhance museum collections around the world...

...A small but growing number of people are taking a hard look at the proposal to capture condors for breeding—and turning thumbs down on what they see...

...A consideration of these contingencies may shed some light on the nature of our obligation to endangered species...

...But a wild animal is much more than these...

...they might not, in fact, reproduce in captivity, leaving potential breeders in cages rather than in the wild where they might be doing more good, and even if they did reproduce, cage-bred condors might never adapt to the wild...

...It can lead one to draw conclusions that are simply not justified...

...Saving the species might mitigate some of the guilt we feel over the sordid treatment that condors have been receiving since November 18,1805, when, as William Clark noted in his journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, "Rubin Fields Killed a Buzzard of the large Kind...

...Following the death, the California Fish and Game Department withdrew all permits for the handling or capturing of wild condors...

...The effects of 1080 are disputed, but many authorities on the condor believe that the poison may be as hazardous to the species as DDT was...

...Condor freedom is taken by the program's supporters as self-evidently desirable...

...The consequence of extinction that most distressed several birders with whom I spoke is that they would lose the opportunity to see condors...

...Anthropomorphism—the ascription of human characteristics to things not human—has clearly fallen on hard times...

...Such a victory would be one for birders as well, who would continue to have California condors to check off on their Life Lists...

...Future developments of these lands would thereafter be forbidden, and an area large enough to encompass most of the condor's wide-ranging activities could become the species' permanent home...

...Condors nest and carry out their other affairs in remote locations, as far from civilized activity as possible...

...For us now to involve condors in what is nothing more than a face-saving scheme will only increase our culpability...

...As the assaults on the species mounted, one upon another, the dimensions of condor territory—which once extended from Baja California to British Columbia, and may have spanned the southern United States— drew inexorably inward, like the perimeter of a slowly fading spotlight...

...The crux of the matter has as much to do with the ethics of artificial maintenance of a species as it does with the feasibility of captive breeding," says Palmer...

...Indeed, it would be a victory for all of us who are saddened at the condor's plight...

...During the 1960s, to cite two extraordinary examples, both the U.S...

...But one must not dismiss the possibility that condors might enjoy flying, or that they might despise captivity...

...When the condor at last sets down to feed, it may be forty miles from its take-off point...

...The ban will remain in effect until a final decision is made on whether or not to go ahead with the captive breeding program...

...It is specious to argue that because condors might adapt to captivity—that is, might make the best of what may be a bad situation—they may therefore justifiably be captured...

...Sonic booms and low-flying aircraft, hikers and off-road vehicles, oil wells and mineral exploration, developers clearing land: All are common near California condor habitat, and all have a potentially adverse effect on the skittish condor's ability to reproduce in the wild...

...Widespread use of DDT over condor range is now known to have caused a thinning of the birds' egg shells...

...The models for the T-shirt design— Robert Leonard Reid writes on wilderness and wildlife issues and is the wilderness representative for the Loma Prieta chapter of the Sierra Club...

...The National Audubon Society is now hawking this T-shirt to raise money for its California Condor Fund...

...And for the U.S...

...This resulted in easy breakage, and the consequent deaths of the undeveloped chicks inside...

...Indeed, the technique of captive breeding has been used so widely in recent years and has met with such notable success, that until now almost no one has questioned its legitimacy as a means for preserving endangered animals...

...Now, in an effort to save the species, the U.S...

...There, the long and lately disheartening saga of the California condor shows unmistakable signs of drawing to a close...

...Having acknowledged the validity of that principle, it is a mystery how they can justify applying it arbitrarily, granting its benefits to the condors of the future while denying them to those alive today...

...Only then can the condor make the best of its now meager chance to survive in the wild...

...The tragedy will be ours, not the condors' Paradoxically, one of the strongest arguments that today's condors ought to be permitted to remain in the wild is provided by proponents of captive breeding themselves...

...The proximity of the species' habitat to prime agricultural land exposed condors to a battery of herbicides and pesticides...

...That the bird is a living creature and not, say, a runaway kite, may not again be manifest until it levels out at 12,000 feet, and flaps its wings for the first time in half an hour...

...No sensible person would claim to know that condors enjoy flying, or that a condor that appears to be sulking in a cage is a bored and unhappy bird...

...If the prevention of a species' extinction is sought only for the benefit of us, the grieving bystanders, or at the cost of an animal's dignified—that is, natural—life, and perhaps death, in its normal habitat, then it may be wrong to seek that goal...

...David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth and a strong opponent of captive breeding, points out that until the causes for the condor's decline are fully understood, it makes no sense to raise the birds in captivity...

...Condors will have lost nothing that they ever coveted...

...Opportunities for such excursions in a captive breeding program would be non-existent...

...But they stand to lose on at least two counts, as a consideration of two aspects of condor behavior will show...

...Hunters have blasted countless numbers of them out of the sky...

...Can you preserve the complex cultural heritage that animals in their natural habitat pass along from one generation to the next...

...During the ensuing months, wildlife biologists will study the birds' habits and movements from afar, through analysis of radio telemetry signals...

...It is possible that there are endangered animals whose lives in the wild can reasonably be duplicated in captivity, and for these captive breeding may be a justifiable solution to their problems...

...But let there be no mistake: If condors are not bred in captivity, it may come to pass at some time in the foreseeable future that the last wild condor will die...

...They strike at the very heart of the issue of captive breeding itself, and cast doubts on its legitimacy as a means for preserving not only condors, but any other wild animals as well...

...Fish and Wildlife Service...

...Captured condors would be consigned to cages about the size of a trailer home...

...Today only a glimmer of the species' former range remains, a wild and rugged mountainous area that overlaps several counties north of Los Angeles...

...Following World War II, a new and , insidious menace began to threaten the condor...

...The first is that a California condor spends a considerable portion of its time flying...

...Given the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, it seems unlikely that any such demonstrations could be made...

...In addition, all local, state, and Federal agencies charged with protecting condors should undertake immediately to halt disturbance of the birds by human beings, and to eliminate contamination of the species' habitat by harmful chemicals, once studies to identify those chemicals have been completed...

...Because the California condor is the largest bird found in North America—its wingspan can reach nine feet and its weight twenty pounds—some have been shot simply to see how big they were...

...Taking off on a feeding mission, a condor will beat its wings a few times, then glide along smoothly until it senses the subtle rush of a warm updraft...

...For reasons that are not fully understood, the huge bird that has soared across the skies of the western United States for possibly 10,000 years may now be headed on an irreversible course toward extinction...

...In the present case breeding condors in captivity would yield several additional benefits to humans Wildlife biologists would be afforded a fine opportunity to add to their knowledge of avian reproduction...

...The National Audubon Society has been the prime mover in efforts to initiate a condor breeding program...

...upon release, cage-reared condors may well fall prey to the same hazards that led to the species' decline in the first place...

...But before laying down your $6.95 to help save the condor, be apprised that the solution to the condor's problems that the Audubon Society has in mind may not be nearly as uplifting as a warm California updraft...

...The symbolism is hard to mistake...

...Borneman then invoked a greatly misunderstood term that has become a prime source of confusion in efforts to determine how animals ought to be treated: "People sometimes look at Topa Topa and imagine that since they would not like to be in a cage, Topa Topa must be saying, 'Gee, I wonder if I'll ever get out of here so that I can fly again.' That is anthropomorphism...

...And former Berkeley zoologist Carl B. Koford, whose three-year field study of the condor resulted in the most exhaustive report on the species yet published, was an outspoken critic of the proposed breeding program before his death in 1980...

...The goal of the proposed breeding program is precisely to establish a self-sustaining population of condors in the wild...

...The chick was one of only two nestlings known to have hatched during the previous year...

...On the contrary, the condor recovery plan that the society and a whole flock of conservationist organizations and government agencies hope to implement may fail to rise above even the minimal standards of charity set during the several centuries of mistreatment that the condor has suffered at human hands...

...Lacking irrefutable evidence linking 1080 to the condor's decline, ranchers continue to spread the poison over condor range in massive amounts...

...Forest Service, both stung by charges that their own past neglect and mismanagement of the condor have contributed directly to the species' decline, captive breeding offers a chance to pull off a spectacular public relations coup, and clutch victory—in the form of condor eggs— from defeat...

...And it could furnish self-satisfying, though no doubt self-deluding, evidence that the human excesses which may have driven the species to the brink of extinction in the first place were not really so excessive after all...

...In the first stage of the program, condors will be trapped and rigged with tiny radio transmitters and then released...

...The human interests in preventing the extinction of the condor are clear indeed...

...these will be given a suitable course in survival training and then released...

...This last is particularly important and promising...

...Beyond logic, there is an ethical component in the captive breeding issue as well, as Mark Palmer, the Sierra Club's regional vice president for Northern California and Nevada, points out...

...Whoever purchases this T-shirt, one reads in the design, has done his or her part to help the beleaguered California condor to overcome the grim fate that now threatens to wipe it off the face of the Earth...

...Carl Koford observed condors for some 500 days while carrying out his primary field research, and concluded that a single flushing of a nesting condor could result in nest desertion...

...For Koford there was a serious fallacy in the argument that endangered species should be preserved in captivity—even if future generations of those species were to be released into the wild...

...Not long ago, a doctor who was able to prevent a patient's death—in other words, to conserve a human— recognized a moral obligation to do so, no matter what the circumstances...

...What is the point of saving genes, he wondered, if in its behavior the animal you engender is different from the one you began with...

...Whatever the reason, it is a mistake to deny the possibility that we may share some of our attributes with animals, simply because we patently do not share all of them...

...Among the measures recommended are studies of the effects of pesticides and other poisons on condors, studies of the species' nesting cycle, and surveys to identify and secure additional suitable condor habitat...

...Koford was convinced that the condor could make a comeback without direct interference in the birds' affairs by scientists...

...If that happens, it will be for us a tragedy of immeasurable proportions...

...Condors need room to spread their wings If today's condors had nothing to lose in being pressed into our service and that of their descendants, there might be no need to question the propriety of captive breeding...

...Unfortunately, the protection from illegal disturbance that the officially protected condor has received from agencies charged with its care has not always been of the first order...

...Whatever the merits of the proposed condor recovery program, there exist some disturbing, unanswered questions about the practice of capturing wild animals for breeding in cages...

...This is now changing...

...Condors, however, are not among them...

...only about thirty of them remain— inhabit the rugged mountains of California's Los Padres National Forest...

...There is probably some trauma initially, but I'm sure that there are no permanent effects...

...A second aspect of condor behavior is of equal importance in assessing the impact that captivity may have on the birds: Condors prefer to be left alone...

...When humans intrude, as they did for example with a second home development on California's Mount Pinos, the birds will quickly move elsewhere...

...The burden of proof should lie with the prospective captors, to demonstrate that removing condors from their natural habitat and forcing them into confinement and close contact with humans will not prove harmful or unpleasant to the birds...

...Joining the Audubon Society in endorsing the proposed program are some of the most august conservation and research organizations in the United States...

...they would remain in these for the rest of their lives...

...Fish and Wildlife and the U.S...

...If captive breeding is to be forgone, what then can be done for today's condors...