About book Condor: To The Brink And Back--The Life And Times Of One Giant Bird (2006)
For the sake of brevity, I have combined my thoughts here with my reading of “Return Of The Condor: The Race To Save Our Largest Bird From Extinction” by John Moir. Both books are enjoyable and complement each other effectively but Moir’s book was more detailed and better written so I would give it the nod over Nielsen’s. However, Nielsen gave greater coverage to the recovery effort in Northern Arizona; Moir hardly mentions Arizona and concentrates instead on California.The California Condor fortunately does not occupy the rarefied strata of a grail bird but it almost reached that nadir when the population plummeted to 22 birds in 1982. From a long gone era Condors once roamed across large portions of the United States where available food sources and suitable nesting sites could be located. Faced with their inevitable extinction, all wild Condors were trapped and placed in captivity in 1987, bringing to a sorrowful end a relic of the Pleistocene epoch perhaps now not quite suited to the modern world. An intense, long and controversial recovery program was initiated but no one really knew where this would eventually lead. Could Condors breed in captivity? Could poisons and lead bullets from hunter killed game be eliminated? Lead being a significant cause of excruciating pain and death of carcass feeding condors. The lead and poison battles still rage today. Could the meme of the Condor be successfully learned by captive raised and then freed birds? All these questions and hundreds more required appropriate resolutions that could be safely and readily integrated into the program. The effort was a daunting, staggering challenge among contentious interests and reduced to its most basic argument came down to “Captive or Forever Free” versus “Temporarily Captive or Forever Dead!!!!” Last year I visited the Grand Canyon and learned that 60 wild California Condors now inhabit Northern Arizona; I was fortunate to see 12. From imagining free ranging Condors over inland evanescent seas of the Pleistocene era to magnificent wild birds now soaring over the mosaic rocks of the Grand Canyon was to me, a close encounter of the grail kind!! Today the total Condor population numbers approximately 280 with the wild population about 135 birds.I would encourage everyone to make the effort to see these magnificent creatures and both books go a long way in providing the reasons why.
The information on the natural history of the condor was interesting, and the reason I wanted to read this book. However, much of it is about the history of California and the various people that have played a role in either preserving or decimating the condor population.I thought this would be an uplifting book, about condors coming back from the brink of extinction, but I found it extremely depressing. Let's just say the history of California is a trail of destruction, death, and the raping of nature, forged by cruel and seedy characters who landed in the garden of Eden and crapped in it.
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As a person who is very afraid of birds, I'm not sure why I chose this book to read. However, I'm glad I did. If you read it you will learn about how civilization and mankind have intentionally and unintentionally adversely effected the condor. You will also read about how scientists and volunteers have brought the condor back from the edge of extinction.I checked the web today and learned that there are 332 living condors and the about 200 of these live in the wild. I was also amazed to learn that a condor can live to be 50 or sixty years old. So, let's hope the condor can continue its resurgance.If you like to read about science and nature, this book is for you.
—Mary
A history of the great California bird from its heyday to near demise, capture and reintroduction into the wild. Information about the bird is considerably more enlivening than the bureaucratic battles of zoologists split between interventionists and hands off types (I tired of the holier than thou hands off'ers) but this war is a big part of the story. What remains up in the air is whether the reintroduced condors will perpetuate the species. Freaky fact: Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act.
—Adrian
