The California Condor - A Success Story



Marble Canyon

On a recent visit to the Grand Canyon, we stopped to see how the California Condors were doing in Marble Canyon.   These birds can have a wing span of 9 ½ feet and weigh up to 26 pounds.  They are BIG and magnificent in flight.  I spotted two on a ledge and watched them take off down the canyon. 








It started to rain as I saw three fly under the bridge below me. 
I hung (more than leaning!) over the sides to see if I could get a picture.  The birds hopped from strut to strut keeping dryer that me. 
They mate for life, lays a single egg every other year, and can live 60 years.   A wildlife recovery program brought the California Condor back from the brink of extinction.
The last time a wild California Condor was spotted in the wild in Arizona was 1925.  By 1982 the total in California and Arizona had dropped to 22 birds.  They were all captured and a captive breeding program was started.  You will notice the numbers on the wings that identify the birds.  It was so successful that in 1992 in California and in 1996 in Arizona, the condors were released back into the wild.  Now there are 58 birds making Arizona their home and the goal is to have 150 birds in each Arizona and California.
Lead ammunition is the biggest problem encountered in this recovery program.  The birds ingest the lead when they scavenge dead animals that have been shot.  Treatment is expensive and previously involved travel by vehicle to cities with testing and treatment facilities.  Recently a treatment center in the Vermillion Cliff area was built and that speeds up the treatment and saves the birds’ lives.  Lead bullets fragment when an animal is shot.  Since condors feed in groups. large numbers of the birds can be poisoned by the lead bullet fragments.  Copper bullets do not fragment and it is more likely that only one bird would be poisoned by the copper bullet instead of the group.  That becomes very important when the total Arizona population is only 58 birds!  Fish and Game teamed with big game hunters offering free non-lead ammunition.  Incidents of lead poisoning declined 40%.
The California Condor is still one of the most endangered birds in the world but it seems that the recovery program is working.  There is a spectacular National Audubon Society documentary describing the recovery program and it is worth seeing the extent of work and danger the volunteers of this program went through.  http://www.mtv.com/movies/movie/40221/moviemain.jhtml
These are also very good  http://www.azgfd.gov/video/CaliforniaCondors.shtml
http://shadowofthecondor.com/
Labels:
Location: U.S. 89A, Marble Canyon, AZ 86036, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I beg...
Read more

Polymer Clay Conversation

Image
One of the polymer clay groups on FaceBook is 'Polymer Clay Collective'.  This is a group of artists working in polymer clay who share ideas and support each other.  I'm so glad to be a part.  A new feature of this group is the 'Polymer Clay Collective Conversations' where a different member answers a set  of questions.  I get to be first - the trailblazer! I hope you enjoy learning a little more about me and in two weeks I get to learn more about someone else. • Tell us a bit about where you live. I live in Prescott AZ right next to the national forest.   When I look out my studio windows, I often see large black ravens swooping between the pine trees.   Binoculars are always available for close viewing of our smaller forest birds.   You’ve probably read about the forest fires we have had in our area this summer.   The monsoon rains we are having are so welcome. • What do you do when you're not polymer claying? As of 2010, I...
Read more

I'm Back with New Pieces of Art Jewelry

Image
It’s been a while since my last post and while I missed writing them, I hope you also missed sharing my adventures!  Between a road trip to Berkeley and having painful (very painful) shoulder tendonitis my activities really slowed down.  Now I’M BACK!  Ready to explore new techniques and have fun. When I see a good tutorial about something new that catches my fancy, I buy it and eventually the day comes when I just have to try it.  Staci Louise Smith wrote a tutorial “Gold Rush: The Rustic Crackle Technique” for Craft Art Edu.  I loved the pictures of her necklaces and wanted to see what I could do.  If you like the crackle effect  on my pieces or want to try something new, check out her tutorial on   www.CraftArtEdu.com    They have good classes on many subjects. When I started following tutorials, I expected my pieces to look like the instructors.  That just did not happen and it is not the fault of the tutorial or ...
Read more