A condor’s tale offers a winning adventure story
Part suspense novel, part adventure tale, Santa Cruz author John
Moir’s
”
Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from
Extinction
”
has an advantage over either genre.
A condor’s tale offers a winning adventure story
Part suspense novel, part adventure tale, Santa Cruz author John Moir’s “Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from Extinction” has an advantage over either genre.
It’s a true story, much of which is set in our own back yard.
It was while living in Southern California that Moir first encountered the largest birds in North America, during an arduous hike in the mountains near Santa Paula. The empty spot on the map is part of the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. As he paused in a howling wind along a ridgeline, two enormous birds flew into view, their wings stretching more than 10 feet across – California condors.
To read this book, or to hear him speak, is to be infected with bottomless enthusiasm for all things wild.
The California condor is an anachronism. When Moir saw his first two birds, only a handful existed on the planet. They evolved to soar over the emptiness of a giant continent. The beaches teamed with the carcasses of whales and sea mammals. Giant sloths, countless bison and an unimaginable abundance of large animals ensured a banquet table of rotting flesh.
Condors soared from Canada to Baja California, and east to Florida. Their enormous bulk – as much as 25 pounds – was carried on their giant wings, wings that might not twitch for hours at a time. Instead, they glided over the landscape, ranging as much as 120 miles in a day.
When the first Europeans came to North America, the condor’s range was already reduced to the West.
Moir’s first sighting would not be his last. But it would be many years filled with acrimony and passionate political and scientific wrangling before anything meaningful would be done to save this iconic animal.
A pivotal discovery changed the fate of the bird. A discovery of a dead condor and the subsequent necropsy turned up the reason for its demise. Lead.
With numbers declining toward 20, Moir describes efforts to scrub the skies of California condors, to capture the last of them and cage them in a desperate captive breeding program.
At first, the program was plagued with high profile mistakes, even disasters. Many scientists and environmentalists argued that the last of this magnificent species should be allowed to decide its own fate, even if that meant inevitable extinction.
Moir notes that extinction is part of a larger plan. But to sit idle while an animal disappears as a consequence of human action is hopelessly cynical, Moir argues.
His story is filled with adventure and passion. Volunteers spend days in sweltering boxes, observing the birds. Nearly everyone who has worked with condors bears scars inflicted by their formidable beaks.
He describes the loss of one of the last of the wild condors two years after his release. The bird, bearing prominent tags on its wings, fell victim to a 9 mm bullet, fired by a bored hunter who had not been able to find the wild pigs that he sought.
Moir’s story is meticulously researched. He refrains from preaching about the use of non-lead ammunition, even as he describes its risk to human health.
The most compelling reason to read “Return of the Condor” is that it is hopeful.
After years of learning by doing, biologists began to make headway. Today, more than 125 condors soar over California and Arizona, and three more are due to be released this Saturday at Pinnacles National Monument. Free-flying birds are making breeding attempts.
While the California condor continues to require active management, due mostly to the continuing presence of lead in gutpiles, the giants that link us all to our prehistory are on their way back.
Against all odds, the California condor survived, and Moir tells the tale with eloquence and passion.
Return of the Condor
By John Moir
Published by The Lyons Press
$24.95
