Carol:
I Came, I Saw, I Condored
The Science Channel’s website has “top 10” links that are curiosity-catching if not deep science. "Top 10 Mating Rituals" fits today’s topic, but I prefer “Top 10 Species We Miss.” The list includes such favorites as the Dodo Bird (#1) and the Dinosaur (#2). Less colorful is a bird whose extinction is the result of a conflict with the life urges of another species, the human being.
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| Passenger Pigeon 1889 |
Number 3 is the Passenger Pigeon, which at one time represented 25-40% of the bird population of the United States. Between the arrival of the first pilgrims in the early 1600’s and 1914, the passenger pigeon population dropped from over 3 billion to zero with the death on Sept 1914 of the Cincinnati Zoological Garden’s captive pigeon Martha. During the late 19th century, human intervention failed to re-establish the species, which needed large, healthy flocks to survive. What happened to the passenger pigeon? Some of their demise came from habitat loss as the European settlers moved westward. More devastating was the appetite for pigeon meat, which became a commercial product in the mid-1800’s. Human beings literally ate the passenger pigeon to death. (Source: Encyclopedia Smithsonian.)
A bird not on the Smithsonian’s top 10 is the California Condor, North America’s largest land bird, with a wing span of 10 feet and a life span of up to 60 years Again, human beings can take dubious credit for the decline in the condor population, not because anyone would consider these vultures edible. The growing people population overtook their territory, and pollution weakened the eggs and killed the parents. By 1987, the population of wild condors had dropped below 10. Scientists had been already been collecting eggs for breeding programs, so they captured the remaining wild condors and stepped up captive breeding efforts. (Source: National Geographic website).
Almost 100 years after the extinction of the final passenger pigeon, the California Condor population is rare, endangered, but growing. Human intervention was controversial and extreme, pinning all hopes for reviving the species on ambitious and expensive captive breeding/re-introduction programs through the collaboration of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and later groups such as the Peregrine Fund.
The current estimated population of California condors is over 320, with half in the wild. In 1996, the Peregrine Fund began releasing captive-bred condors into the Grand Canyon, with the National Parks Service in 2009 recording 8 wild-bred condors in Arizona and Utah along with 5 nesting areas. If you want to see a California Condor up close, your best bet is probably a zoo (San Diego Safari Park, Santa Barbara Zoo). If you want to see a Condor in the wild, California’s Big Sur and Pinnacles National Monument near Hollister.
The Grand Canyon? Ask my husband about his field trip to the Canyon with the bird-watching class from Yavapai College several years back. The trip started at the North Rim, where a dinner-time sighting caused a stampede of birders to the windows of the Grand Canyon Lodge to glimpse a Condor. Their best viewing came later at the South Rim, right outside Kolb Studio where the condors soared close enough for Marc to see their numbered ID tags. Marc was so excited, he bought a t-shirt announcing to the world, “I Came…I Saw… I Condored.”
Two bird stories with very different endings. Ironically, the extinction of the passenger pigeon led to the enactment of many of the conservation laws that would later rescue the Condor from becoming one of the “Top 10 Species We Miss.”
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| California Condor in flight, 2007 |
Sources:
Discovery Channel.” Mutant Planet. Top 10 Extinct Species—Passenger Pigeon
http://science.discovery.com/top-ten/2009/extinct-species/extinct-species-03.html
Encyclopedia Smithsonian on line.”Passenger Pigeons”
http://www.si.edu/encyclopedia_Si/nmnh/passpig.htm
National Geographic online.”California Condor.”
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/california-condor/
National Parks Service: Grand Canyon Condor Re-introduction Program. http://www.nps.gov/grca/naturescience/condor-re-introduction.htm
Passenger Pigeons. Encyclopedia Smithsonian on line.
http://www.si.edu/encyclopedia_Si/nmnh/passpig.htm
Megan:
No essay from me, sorry. Turns out I don't get along with the pain medication at all. So, I'm hanging out in bed today.
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