The Condors' Return

Return of the Condor The Giant Vulture Again Flaps Its Five-foot Wings in Northern Arizona

In a mid-November day in 1996, I hike to a small observation blind bolted to the top of the Vermilion Cliffs. Somewhere behind me, two ravens gurgle quietly. A thousand feet below me, a car spews dust along the floor of House Rock Valley. This is sandstone country, soaring bird country, a place with air so optically pure that one rippling thermal is all that separates me from the Grand Canyon 40 miles to the south. I duck my head and crawl inside the cramped blind to find photographer Marty Cordano wrestling with tripod and telephoto lens. I immediately take up my own struggle with an ungainly spotting scope and two folding chairs. In the too-tight quarters, Marty's elbow bumps mine, a tripod leg smacks his camera; muttered growls sift through the air. Exasperated, I scratch a squiggly line on the dirt floor. "Cross this line and you're carrion," I hiss. Marty responds by hooking his fingers beaklike and ripping the air the way a condor might rip open a fresh carcass. I see we are in the proper mood now, so I turn my attention to the birds. "The birds" are six California condors penned up inside a chain-link enclosure on the cliff's edge. The birds stand tall and regal, their glossy black feathers rustling like heavy silk. They are the largest flying birds in North America, attaining heights up to 4% feet, weights more than 20 pounds, wingspans nearly 10 feet. They also are among the most endangered. In 1985 only nine California condors survived in the wild. By 1987, none. Today, thanks to a captive breeding program, 20 condors fly the mountains of Southern California. And the six birds here, when they are released, will boost that total to 26, the difference being that these condors will live in Arizona, the first to fly here in the last 72 years. From the blind, I watch a female called Yellow Right hop up onto a weathered log to bask in the sun. Nearby a male called White Left stretches and poses like a dancer on stage. The names come from their colored leg bands, which were pointed out by Mark Vekasy and Hannah Ogden, two of the biologists monitoring the condors at the release site. Mark and Hannah both work for the Peregrine Fund, a nonprofit conservation group based in Boise, Idaho. They are adding their expertise with raptors to the tremendously complex reintroduction effort in Arizona. Without the cooperation of multiple state and federal agencies, Indian tribes, local communities, and private landowners, this reintroduction would never have been possible. Listening to Mark and Hannah talk, it becomes clear they recognize individual condor personalities. Mark, for example, confides to me about White Left: "I'm worried. He doesn't interact with the others, stays too much by himself. I don't know if he'll make it with the flock." I also detect a favorite: Black Left. This bird, raised at the Peregrine Fund's new condor breeding facility at Boise, Idaho, will be the first chick hatched outside of California to be released into the wild. Her bubbly, outgoing personality has won over her keepers, and as a sign of affection, they have taken to calling her "Boise" instead of Black Left the only bird not referred to by its leg bands.

(LEFT) Prior to its reintroduction, the California condor was last seen in Arizona in 1924. Here, captive condors await their turn in the wild. (RIGHT) Home now to the condors, the sandstone escarpment of the Vermilion Cliffs stretches for 100 miles, fronting the Paria Wilderness.

Return of the Condor

Fresh activity erupts in the pen. White Right, the only other male in this group, lifts his wings and trots toward the corner. Yellow Right, a female, sidesteps nervously, then races toward the back. Boise appears delighted. Perched on a juniper log, she spontaneously leaps in the air, flaps her wings, and twirls around in a quick pirouette.

The last time a reliable observer spotted a condor in Arizona was 1924, near Williams. But much older condor bones and nesting sites have been found in Grand Canyon caves, proving the birds flourished there during the Pleistocene Epoch, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. While they probably left the Grand Canyon long before Europeans reached western North America, condors briefly reinhabited parts of Arizona between 1700 and the late 1800s, lured back by the sudden influx of livestock.

But human depredations shooting, poisoning, habitat destruction soon overwhelmed the condor's slow reproductive capacity. By 1930 the entire conIn a vivid act of faith or bravery, one daring bird leaps from the cliff, wings aloft, legs trailing down.

dor population had retreated to a Ushaped corridor in California between Santa Barbara and the Sierra Nevada range. By the late 1970s, only 30 survived, and by mid1985, members of four of the last five breeding pairs had disappeared. Condors faced a fast countdown to extinction.

At this point, a controversial decision was made to save the dwindling gene pool. All remaining birds would be captured, and the entire future of the California condor placed in the care of a captive breeding program based at the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos.

In remarkably short order, the captive breeding program succeeded. And by January, 1992, the world population of captive condors had swelled beyond 60, a number sufficient to contemplate releasing some of the new birds. But the first condor reintroductions in California were nearly catastrophic. Of the first two birds, one died from drinking antifreeze. Among the following six, three died in collisions with power lines. Among the next six, one more crashed and died.

Faced with such morbid statistics, the Condor Recovery Team (a group of experts from zoos, universities, agencies, and private organizations coordinated through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) quickly diagnosed the cause. Captive birds had grown accustomed to people. A program of "aversion training" was instituted to strike new fear in condor hearts.

It went like this: Every time a condor encountered a human, the bird was ambushed and harassed. Every time a condor landed on a mock power pole in its flight pen, the bird received a painful shock. It worked. New releases stayed out of trouble.

But the Condor Recovery Team also prescribed developing a new, safer condor release site away from the dense population base of Southern California. They found it in the remote lands surrounding the Grand Canyon. With the help of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, up to 150 condors may eventually be released here.

I spot a desiccated carcass lying scattered in the condor pen. It is typical condor food long dead, just the way condors like it. Condors, big as they are, remain vultures. They do not kill their meat.

Black Right swaggers toward the carcass like a Western gunslinger. Along with her compatriots, she is one of those rare condors that have been raised solely by their parents, not by surrogate humans with hand puppets. This all is part of the great condor experiment. Will parent-reared condors fare better in the wild than surrogate-reared?

Black Right and her group also are very young, among the youngest condors ever released. By release day, she will barely reach six months, the age at which condors usually try their first flights. Almost lost among all the reintroduction hoopla is the fact that these birds are mere fledglings, toddlers. Nobody even knows if the young condors can fly.

White Right is trying to fly. He spreads his wings and glides across the pen. Then, legs outstretched, he deliberately crashes the fence at cliff's edge. What is happening? Again and again, I watch him hop up and rattle the cage, making the chain link sing.

"White Right was fathered by the last wild condor captured," says Mark Vekasy. "He is the most aggressive bird here. He regularly sails across the pen like that."

This leads to the question I've been wanting to ask all day. Will any of these birds fly when they are released?

Mark hesitates a moment, debating whether to go on record with a guess, a feeling, a prediction. Finally he nods his head. "White Right is ready," he says softly. Then he looks me in the eye. "White Right will fly on December 12."

A month later, release day, December 12, plays out like an urban street festival on the floor of House Rock Valley. Condor feathers, condor shirts, conFor signs the birds seem to be with us though we're gathered 1,000 feet below and a mile west of the shelter where they wait.

The speeches start at 9 A.M., and I fully intend to avoid them, but a colorful reminiscence by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt tweaks my imagination.

"When I was young," Babbitt says in a drawling voice, "I actually talked with several people who had seen the condor over by the Grand Canyon. I always remember one old cowboy telling me, 'Bruce, the remarkable thing about this bird was I always saw the shadow on the ground before I saw the bird in the sky.'"

The speeches conclude. A Navajo elder performs a traditional blessing for the birds. Finally Babbitt takes the stage again. It is time, he says. Help me count down the seconds to this historic release.

"Ten, nine, eight . . ." chimes the crowd. The counting continues, and when the crowd finally ticks off, "three, two, one," several hundred voices rise in a single shout: "Fly!"

At that moment, up on the cliff, Mark pulls open the door to the condors' pen. We look up expectantly, sizzling with tension. And we wait. Then a radio message whispers through the public address system. "One bird is out."

Yes!

The bird is standing, stretching its wings to the sun. Soon other condors emerge, gathering around and looking confused. And then, in a vivid act of faith or bravery, one daring bird leaps from the cliff, wings aloft, legs trailing down.

The radio cries: "Number 50 is flying." I cheer along with hundreds of others. Then I panic. Who is Number 50? When did the leg bands change to numbered tags? How will I tell the birds apart? How will this bird land? But my worries are drowned out by the thundering ovation of the crowd.

Number 50 alights. Other birds follow. One by one, they test their wings, their freedom, their luck. Suddenly four condors launch airborne at once.

I reel with awe and nervous excitement, but no one is as staggered as the experts from the Condor Recovery Team. As I look around me, thumbs-up signs flash between biologists, between agencies, between states. Everyone pulls in the same direction today.

But who was that Number 50 that led the air show? Was it the oldest, White Right? If not...?

I spot Hannah Ogden on the edge of the crowd demonstrating some telemetry equipment she will use to monitor the condors. Tapping her shoulder, I ask: "Who was first to fly? Who was Number 50?"

She turns to me with a broad smile. "Boise," she says proudly. "Boise was the first to fly." She takes a long look back up at the high cliff. "Oh, man. Wasn't it incredible?"

Author's Note: The months following release proved extraordinarily eventful. In April, Condor 36 became the first to visit the Grand Canyon. In May, Condors 33 and 40 located their first "wild" food east of Page. Meanwhile, two condors died. Condor 42 succumbed to a golden eagle attack in January, and Condor 51 collided with a power line in May. Also in May, nine more condors were brought to the Vermilion Cliffs, bringing the total in Arizona to 13.