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Condor Question: Captive or Forever Free?
Combines a study of the history and behavior of the California condor with an examination of man's treatment of the bird and the programs necessary to protect the endangered species
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Published January 1, 1982
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July 25, 2022
David Phillips and Hugh Nash present a collection of articles, interviews, and letters from some big-name conservationists and well known condor researchers in a thorough discussion of the US Fish and Wildlife’s California Condor Recovery Plan and the general future of the species. A. Starker Leopold, son of the famous ecologist Aldo Leopold, Carl Koford, author of “the definitive source on condor behavior and biology,” and David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth and three time board member of the Sierra Club, and many others lend their voices to this book.
The recovery plan itself aimed to capture a few condors in order to study if they would propagate in captivity, eventually aiming to include the capture of all known condors so that they could be weighed, sexed, otherwise measured, and fitted with tracking devices. The book’s contributors, however, believed that there was not enough evidence that captive propagation would work and that the actual process of capturing condors could stress them out enough to severely reduce their fecundity and survival. They criticized various aspects of the plan, especially its overly hands-on approach and its failure to ensure the long-term protection of condor habitat. The lack of measures within the program to protect condor habitat was seen as a major oversight- once the condors were captured and placed in zoos, many conservationists feared the land would be developed and become unfit for the condor once they were finally released back onto the landscape.
Some of the concerns of the contributors were realized when on June 30, 1980 a team of biologists heavily interfered with two condor chicks, the only two known to have hatched that year, in order to photograph and weigh them. One of the two, so distraught by the manhandling, died. The entire population of California condors at that time was estimated to be around 30 and thus due to an unnecessary need for measurements that team, tasked with defending the condor, reduced the species by 1/30.
Ultimately USFWS followed through with the plan- in 1987 every single California condor known to exist, for a grand total of 22 birds, were captured and placed in zoos. Yet contrary to the expectations of the book, captive propagation efforts proved to be successful- by 2009 there were 156 condors in the wild.
But that by no means means the condor was safe. Here also is where one of the more interesting questions posed by the book becomes relevant- are they the same condors? Some of the contributors feared that if the entire species were tagged, tracked, and born in a cage then they would cease to be the same condors that were captured in the 1980s. In “The Condor and a Sense of Place,” one of the concluding chapters of the book, David Brower explains that we (any living being- not just people) are more than our scientific biological makeup. We are “products of our sense of place” and in removing the condor from their “place” we reduce them to a small fraction of what they are. The condor, he says, “is five per cent feathers, flesh, blood, and bone. All the rest is place.” Reducing them to lives of captivity strips them of the lands they’ve known for eons, destroying their own sense of “place.”
The California condor once roamed from Baja California north to British Columbia. Remnants of the Pleistocene, they are relics of a time vastly different than our own- as scavengers they once fed on mastodons, smilodons, and giant ground sloths- yet they fit in quite well with the mega fauna, soaring over them with their own mega wingspan of over nine feet.
Products of a time of titans, such an intense breeding program reduces them to the status of chickens- farmed, artificial. The program itself also did little to address the actual causes of decline- being scavengers they were continually feeding on the corpses of animals contaminated with pesticides from farmers and lead from hunters. Between 1992 and 2013 over a third of condor deaths were due to lead poisoning. As already mentioned the plan did nothing to guarantee their stake on the land and did not expand habitat protections.
The fears of the program’s critics were again realized when captive-bred condors were first returned to their homelands. Of the first 13 zoo-bred condors released in 1992 and 1993, five were dead by 1995- utility poles and power lines killed four while another drank antifreeze in a parking lot. They were losing their wildness, losing what they were. The critics feared they’d forget how to be condors and they were right- following those losses in the 90s condors had to go through a two month “boot camp” at the Los Angeles Zoo that taught them to avoid humans and powerlines, behaviors we hadn’t needed to teach them before- Carl Koford stressed throughout his contributions to this book that condors are very wary, becoming uncomfortable even within a half mile of a person. Lands the returned condors frequented were seeded with calf carcasses in the hope it’d help them learn to scavenge. They ceased to be wild and thus, in a way, ceased to be condors.
Overall I found this collection very thought provoking about how we should view and treat wildlife- what makes a condor a condor? Is a captive condor the same as a wild condor? Wherein lies the difference, and how must this be accounted for during recovery efforts? The philosophical and ethical implications of such questions are hugely important for the conservation movement in establishing how we must approach our mistakes. I also found looking at the issue from the losing side interesting- the objections of the contributors ultimately came to nil, or almost so, when every condor ended up in a zoo. Seeing their complaints in light of their failure added another dimension to the plight of the condor and the road to recovery that I was not familiar with.
The recovery plan itself aimed to capture a few condors in order to study if they would propagate in captivity, eventually aiming to include the capture of all known condors so that they could be weighed, sexed, otherwise measured, and fitted with tracking devices. The book’s contributors, however, believed that there was not enough evidence that captive propagation would work and that the actual process of capturing condors could stress them out enough to severely reduce their fecundity and survival. They criticized various aspects of the plan, especially its overly hands-on approach and its failure to ensure the long-term protection of condor habitat. The lack of measures within the program to protect condor habitat was seen as a major oversight- once the condors were captured and placed in zoos, many conservationists feared the land would be developed and become unfit for the condor once they were finally released back onto the landscape.
Some of the concerns of the contributors were realized when on June 30, 1980 a team of biologists heavily interfered with two condor chicks, the only two known to have hatched that year, in order to photograph and weigh them. One of the two, so distraught by the manhandling, died. The entire population of California condors at that time was estimated to be around 30 and thus due to an unnecessary need for measurements that team, tasked with defending the condor, reduced the species by 1/30.
Ultimately USFWS followed through with the plan- in 1987 every single California condor known to exist, for a grand total of 22 birds, were captured and placed in zoos. Yet contrary to the expectations of the book, captive propagation efforts proved to be successful- by 2009 there were 156 condors in the wild.
But that by no means means the condor was safe. Here also is where one of the more interesting questions posed by the book becomes relevant- are they the same condors? Some of the contributors feared that if the entire species were tagged, tracked, and born in a cage then they would cease to be the same condors that were captured in the 1980s. In “The Condor and a Sense of Place,” one of the concluding chapters of the book, David Brower explains that we (any living being- not just people) are more than our scientific biological makeup. We are “products of our sense of place” and in removing the condor from their “place” we reduce them to a small fraction of what they are. The condor, he says, “is five per cent feathers, flesh, blood, and bone. All the rest is place.” Reducing them to lives of captivity strips them of the lands they’ve known for eons, destroying their own sense of “place.”
The California condor once roamed from Baja California north to British Columbia. Remnants of the Pleistocene, they are relics of a time vastly different than our own- as scavengers they once fed on mastodons, smilodons, and giant ground sloths- yet they fit in quite well with the mega fauna, soaring over them with their own mega wingspan of over nine feet.
Products of a time of titans, such an intense breeding program reduces them to the status of chickens- farmed, artificial. The program itself also did little to address the actual causes of decline- being scavengers they were continually feeding on the corpses of animals contaminated with pesticides from farmers and lead from hunters. Between 1992 and 2013 over a third of condor deaths were due to lead poisoning. As already mentioned the plan did nothing to guarantee their stake on the land and did not expand habitat protections.
The fears of the program’s critics were again realized when captive-bred condors were first returned to their homelands. Of the first 13 zoo-bred condors released in 1992 and 1993, five were dead by 1995- utility poles and power lines killed four while another drank antifreeze in a parking lot. They were losing their wildness, losing what they were. The critics feared they’d forget how to be condors and they were right- following those losses in the 90s condors had to go through a two month “boot camp” at the Los Angeles Zoo that taught them to avoid humans and powerlines, behaviors we hadn’t needed to teach them before- Carl Koford stressed throughout his contributions to this book that condors are very wary, becoming uncomfortable even within a half mile of a person. Lands the returned condors frequented were seeded with calf carcasses in the hope it’d help them learn to scavenge. They ceased to be wild and thus, in a way, ceased to be condors.
Overall I found this collection very thought provoking about how we should view and treat wildlife- what makes a condor a condor? Is a captive condor the same as a wild condor? Wherein lies the difference, and how must this be accounted for during recovery efforts? The philosophical and ethical implications of such questions are hugely important for the conservation movement in establishing how we must approach our mistakes. I also found looking at the issue from the losing side interesting- the objections of the contributors ultimately came to nil, or almost so, when every condor ended up in a zoo. Seeing their complaints in light of their failure added another dimension to the plight of the condor and the road to recovery that I was not familiar with.
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