While many of us are enraptured with our local bald eagle fledglings (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/humboldt-bay-eagle-cam), California condors are making a slow but steady comeback from the brink of extinction a few hundred miles away. Visitors to the nation’s newest national park, Pinnacles, have the rare opportunity to see condors in action. The park is one of two release sites in California (the other is near Big Sur), and currently more than 30 free-flying, but closely monitored, condors make the park their home.
The remnants of half of an extinct volcano can be found in Pinnacles, about 80 miles southeast of San Jose. The other half is nearly 200 miles away. Soon after its formation 23 million years ago, Neenach Volcano split in two along the San Andreas fault system. Since then, the western half has crept northward about half an inch per year, during which time erosion has reduced the once-towering half-volcano into a series of sculpted rock formations — hence “Pinnacles.” Here, angular chunks of rock and gravel are cemented into a tightly knit matrix known as breccia. The unusual igneous composition (andesite and rhyolite) of Pinnacles breccia exactly matches that of rocks found 200 miles to the south, near Neenach in Los Angeles County. This fact was used to bolster the then-newly minted geological theory of plate tectonics in the late 1950s.
Although the volcano is long dormant, seismic activity associated with the fault zone is still commonplace. One serendipitous result of the ever-shifting earth is the creation of two enticing talus caves, where enormous boulders have fallen into narrow gorges, wedging themselves into cracks but leaving sufficient space underneath to walk or wiggle through. Since colonies of Townsend big-eared bats breed in the caves, they’re off-limits to visitors during pupping season.
On a recent visit to Pinnacles, my wife and I were treated to the sight of half a dozen of the huge raptors circling and swooping in updrafts above “Condor Gulch,” looking for carrion. One even posed fearlessly nearby, which amazed us until we read that this particular condor had spent most of her life in a breeding facility in Portland. Hatched in May 2011, she was released in the park last February. Bird number 626 “is the most submissive bird of the 2013 cohort, spending a lot of her time away from the other juveniles in the pen,” according to the California Condor Recovery Program website. After reaching sexual maturity at 5 or 6 years old, female condors usually lay a single egg each year. The birds mate for life and typically live at least 50 years. Pinnacles-released condors are currently caring for hatchlings at three nests in or near the park.
These near-extinct birds — only about 400 remain, half of which are in captivity — deserve our care and protection. Their particularly strong digestive juices have made them vulnerable to lead shot and bullets in the dead animals on which they often feed. Additionally, power lines, poachers, habitat destruction and egg collecting have all taken their toll, so the long-term future of California condors is still far from assured. If you’re not convinced that these magnificent birds are worthy of our care and protection, a visit to Pinnacles National Park will convince you. As you watch these great creatures, whose 10-foot wingspan is the largest of any North American bird, soaring overhead, your heart may soar with them.
Barry Evans (barryevans9@yahoo.com) plans on returning as a condor
in his next life.
Related Stories
This article appears in Humboldt, The Book.
Radical animal rights groups like the Humane Society of the US, Audubon California, Center for Biological Diversity, and Action For Animals are conducting a war aimed at the banning of sport hunting in California. One way they are trying to accomplish this is by sponsoring AB711, which calls for a state-wide ban on most kinds of hunting ammunition available to the public. The same groups may try to expand the ban to your state. These groups claim that scavenging animals, such as the California condor, ingest and are poisoned by pieces of metallic lead bullets present in gut piles of harvested game left in the field by hunters. They rely on certain scientific papers that allegedly support these claims, and often use the poisoning of the California condor to justify their anti-lead ammunition agenda.
But there are serious scientific questions about the validity of their claims. The failure of the hastily-enacted California lead ammunition ban legislation of 2007 (AB821) suggests that these groups are wrong. AB821 banned the use of lead ammunition in the “condor zone” region of California. It was strong-armed through the legislature, bypassing the usual path involving the more scientifically inclined California Fish & Game Commission, based on the promise that the ban would lower the condors’ elevated blood-lead levels, and solve the lead poisoning problem. But AB821 has not resulted in lower blood-lead levels or otherwise reduced lead poisoning in condors. Despite the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s acknowledgment that 99% of hunters are complying with the lead ban in the “condor zone” since the law took effect, condors’ blood-lead levels, poisoning and mortality have increased since 2007!
There are obviously other sources of lead in the environment. These alternative sources are likely an industrial lead compound (e.g leaded gasoline, paint or pesticides), which is far more soluble and bioavailable to condors. We have identified some of those potential alternative sources, and we encourage you to join the hunt for the truth with us and learn the real facts! To learn all the facts in the lead ammunition debate, visit http://www.huntfortruth.org.
Thanks for responding, but you kinda lost me at “radical” and “war.”
Please do read: http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/california_condor…
Excerpt: “Although there may be other sources of lead, a scientific study funded by the Arizona Game and Fish Department has identified lead from spent ammunition as the major source of lead in condors.”
“Lead toxicity has been identified as the leading cause of death in condors in the Arizona reintroduction program. At least fifteen condors have died of lead poisoning since 2000.”