<
https://www.deseret.com/magazine/2024/06/01/consider-the-condor-extinction-preservation/>
"Explorers and settlers couldn’t agree on whether they beheld beauty or beast.
In 1806, on the banks of the Columbia River, William Clark jotted in his
journal that the California condor is “a handsom bird,” an observation later
contradicted by an account in the Sacramento Daily Union describing “a huge
monster” that terrified the residents of a small Nevada outpost. In the same
era,
Scientific American called them “as graceful and majestic as any bird in
the world,” only to be disputed by
Field & Stream, which described the
California condor as evil looking, “like a cross between an executioner and an
undertaker.”
Bald and hunchbacked, with a head that changes from peach to orange to yellow
depending on its mood, and tufts of black plumage that poof out from the base
of its wrinkly neck like a fur coat on an elderly woman, Gymnogyps
californianus is a bird of contradictions. A symbol of both death and
resurgence. The sight of one wheeling overhead signals another animal’s passing
— and the vulture’s next meal — but as a species, it has survived multiple
brushes with mortality.
In 1982, just 22 remained in the wild. Today, there are about 560. Curiously,
the culprit of the condor’s precipitous decline in the last century — and what
keeps its numbers dangerously low now — measures less than two inches long and
weighs less than 10 grams. The lead bullet, the very tool those European
settlers used to colonize the West, has placed condors in near-constant mortal
peril. While predators, vehicle collisions, electrocution from power lines and
forest fires also kill condors, none are as detrimental as lead poisoning,
which is the cause of half of all diagnosed deaths annually. Because they
constantly feed on carrion, and because they congregate in groups — they’re as
socially attached to each other as we are — a single lead-laden carcass can
poison multiple birds at once. “It only takes one little lead fragment that’s
as big as a couple of grains of sand,” says Myra Finkelstein, an environmental
toxicologist at University of California, Santa Cruz. “That has enough lead to
kill a condor.”
To keep the species from disappearing forever, fewer lead bullets will need to
litter the West, and scientists will need to continue the project that brought
the birds back from the brink. In the 1980s, researchers captured all 22 birds,
held them in a breeding facility, and raised their chicks before releasing them
back into the wild. As one of the first animals listed under the
Endangered
Species Act, the condor’s recovery was deemed a testament to federal wildlife
protections.
Today, those efforts continue, led by conservation biologists as vehement about
the dangers of lead as they are committed to reintroducing more raptors into
the wild. Some may seem as contradictory as the birds themselves."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/dawn-solar-age-same-sex-thailand-nature-europe/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
