Authors: John Nielsen
2.
A flat wooden tray full of birds' eggs rests in Kelly Truesdale's lap
: the rest of what I know about the egg collector Kelly Truesdale comes from Ian McMillan,
Man and the California Condor
, E. P. Dutton, 1968, or from William Dawson's account of a condor eggâcollecting trip he took with Truesdale once; that account is part of Dawson's massive study,
The Birds of California
, South Moulton Company of Los Angeles, 1923.
3.
Kelly Truesdale starred in some of the best pulp nonfiction:
accounts of some of the crazy things egg collectors used to do are taken mostly from Joseph Kastner,
A World of Watchers: An Informal History of the American Passion for Birds
, Sierra Club Books, 1986; articles that also shaped my thoughts included Harry H. Dunn, “How I Found the Nest of a Condor,”
The American Boy
(Feb. 1907) and H. G. Rising, “The Capture of a California Condor,”
The Bulletin of the Cooper Ornithological Club
1, no. 2 (Spring 1889).
4. “
And as he drove back to headquarters”:
the quote is from Earle Crow,
Men of El Tejon
, Ward Ritchie Press, 1957.
5.
Everyone who's ever lived in these small towns:
the story of the St. Francis dam disaster is best told in Charles F. Outland's
Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St. Francis Dam,
A. H. Clark Co., 1963.
CHAPTER EIGHT: CARL KOFORD
1.
The best thing that can happen:
introductory quote and others that clearly follow are from H. H. Sheldon, “What Price Condor?”
Field & Stream
(Sept. 1939).
2.
The jolting launch makes the pilot and crew of the plane:
quotes I imagine Koford thinking while he's flying a scout plane in World War II are based on Carl Koford,
The California Condor
, Dover, 1953.
3.
Carl Koford is the patron saint of condor field research:
notes taken by Koford in the field are transcribed from a copy of his field notes kept at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley.
4.
Koford hitched his first ride into condor country in the spring of 1939:
the letters of introduction from Joseph Grinnell that Koford carried in the field were supplied by the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley.
5.
“Carl was frugal”:
Ian McMillan's description of Koford's beat-up car comes from McMillan,
Man and the California Condor.
6.
These two men were Koford's best friends in the field at the time:
allegations that Koford often handled condors in their nests before the start of World War II are based on films the late Ed Harrison showed me in his office, and photographs Koford took of Harrison in the back of a cave at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary, holding the condor chick known as Oscar.
7.
This was not a notion that went over very well in the scientific community:
my views of Koford's complicated legacy were shaped by an unpublished manuscript provided by Roland Clement, former science director at the National Audubon Society; by Snyder and Snyder,
The California Condor;
and by the text of the only lengthy interview Carl Koford ever sat for, in David Phillips
and Hugh Nash, eds.,
The Condor Question: Captive or Forever Free?
Friends of the Earth, 1981.
CHAPTER NINE: HANDS-ON
1.
Ian McMillan was removed from this committee:
McMillan's statement about being kicked off the scientific review panel set up to monitor Sibley's work comes from an interview with McMillan published in Phillips and Nash,
The Condor Question
.
2.
Sibley and McMillan never got the chance to talk about becoming allies:
accounts of Sibley's fieldwork and his struggles to get along with hands-off condor activists, the U.S. Forest Service, and local business groups pushing for permission to dam the river that runs through the condor's breeding grounds are based partly on e-mail exchanges, but mostly on the regular reports Sibley sent to the Endangered Species Wildlife Station at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland.
3.
Topa Topa hasn't seen the wild since:
some of the descriptions of Topa Topa misbehaving at the Los Angeles Zoo come from the unpublished “Notes on the Behavior of Topa Topa,” written for the zoo by former condor keeper Frank Todd in 1971.
4.
The Sespe Creek project skidded off the tracks in the summer of 1967:
McMillan's claim that the public vote against building the Sespe dam project was a sign of the environmental times comes from his book
Man and the California Condor
.
5.
McMillan and his allies failed to thank Fred Sibley for helping to nail this coffin shut:
Sibley's claim that the dam will drive the condor extinct is made in a report entitled “Effects of the Sespe Creek Project on the California Condor,” August 1969.
6.
Sibley quit his job as a condor biologist:
accounts of how Fred Sibley lost his job come from numerous sources.
CHAPTER TEN: CONTINGENCIES
1.
A story on the Internet started me down this path of inquiry:
Dave Boehi, “Mr. Wilbur Loves the Condor” can be found online at www.wwcmagazine.org, which is affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ.
2.
Wilbur defined these drastic steps in a Contingency Plan:
references to the fight over whether to permit phosphate mining in the condor refuge are based on various news reports and an internal memo on an August 3, 1970, meeting involving various government agencies and representatives of the mining industry and the National Audubon Society.
3.
But the activists were outraged by the “last-ditch” actions:
reports on the internal debate over whether to include a last-ditch captive breeding plan in the updated version of the California Condor Recovery Plan required by the U.S. Endangered Species Act are described at length by Sanford R. Wilbur in his self-published
Condor Tales: What I Learned in Twelve Years with the Big Birds
, 2004.
4.
“
The existence of the California condor depends on conscientious human intervention”:
quotes from the panel of “independent” scientists asked to review the condor's status and recommend conservation priorities are taken from “Audubon Conservation Report No. 6: Report of the Advisory Panel on the California Condor,” June 1978.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: ENDGAME
1.
A scientific SWAT team rolled into the Sespe in the summer of 1980:
accounts of the events that led to the capture of the last wild condor in 1987 are as numerous as they are varied. Noel Snyder's point of view is laid out quite extensively in
The California Condor
; David Darlington, a hands-off activist, profiled the legendary activist/ranchers Eben and Ian McMillan in his book
In Condor Country
, Henry Holt, 1987. Other accounts can be found in Phillips and Nash,
The Condor Question
and Wilbur's
Condor Tales
.
2.
Snyder was right about the activists:
Eben McMillan's letter to Governor Edmund G. Brown was found in a filing cabinet at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regional office in Ventura, California.
3.
Brower and Phillips asked to see the film of the disaster:
David Brower's side of the arguments that followed the accidental killing of a condor chick in its nest by a USFWS biologist are recounted in Phillips and Nash,
The Condor Question
, which includes written statements between Dave Phillips of Friends of the Earth and Bill Lehman, the government biologist in whose arms the chick died.
4.
Brower and his colleagues jumped all over that claim:
open exchanges between Brower and Lehman and a telegram Brower sent to Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus are also published in Phillips and Nash,
The Condor Question
.
5.
The California Condor Recovery team did a huge amount of living on condor time:
accounts of what the field teams did until the state permits that allowed them to trap condors, fit them with radio transmitters, and ultimately take them to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo are based in part on field notes taken by the members of the condor field teams.
6.
Condor country had become a risky place for condors:
Audubon's reluctance to allow all the birds to be taken into captivity is justified in an internal memo sent to some of the leaders of the condor program.
7.
More ugliness followed:
exchanges between Marsha Hobbs of the Los Angeles Zoo and Peter Berle of the National Audubon Society are based on dueling press releases and news reports.
CHAPTER TWELVE: ZOO
1.
The condor in the kennel behind the front seat:
almost all this chapter is based on interviews with scientists and others at the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species at the San Diego Zoo, and the people who work in the Captive Breeding Center at the Peregrine Fund
.
But my opinions were no doubt shaped indirectly by the following written materials: Janny Scott, “An Attractive Bird? Condor Passes Health; Mate to be Picked,”
Los Angeles Times
, April 21, 1987; Nancy Ray, “Ambitious Plan Is Last Hope to Rescue Bird from Extinction,”
Los Angeles Times
, March 25, 1982; William D. Toone, “Rodan Revisited,”
Zoo News,
San Diego Zoo, December 1981; “Cathartid Feeding Protocol,” 1985 memo, Los Angeles Zoo; Michael Soule and J. Verner, “Population goals for the California Condor,” unpublished report, March 16, 1987; and Sanford Wilbur and Jerome Jackson, eds.,
Vulture Biology and Management
, Univ. California Berkeley, 1983.
2.
The point of the article was in the headline itself:
Bil Gilbert, “Why Don't We Pull the Plug on the Condor and Ferret?”
Discover
(July 1986).
3.
Kiff had signed off on the recovery plan:
the legal claim that the California condor has been “technically extinct” since the last free-flying bird was captured in 1987 has never been pursued by the Tejon Ranch, but I'm told that it is still on file at the USFWS Sacramento office.
4.
In 1989, these gathering land-use fights were postponed by a controversial experiment:
accounts of the debate over whether Andean condors should be released “to hold the habitat” until the California birds were ready to return are found in Wilbur,
Condor Tales
; Snyder and Snyder,
The California Condor
; and various news reports, including David Smollar, “Can Andean Condor Help Save California Kin?”
Los Angeles Times
, Nov. 7, 1986.
5.
Early April, 1988:
some of what I know about the first hatching of a California condor egg laid in captivity comes from “Condor Chick Stuck in Egg, Scientists Stand by to Help,” wire reports,
Los Angeles Times
, April 30, 1988; and “Healthy Condor Hatches in San Diego,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 30, 1988.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: GRAND CANYON
1.
When Robert Mesta saw himself hanging in effigy:
Robert Mesta's account of the disastrous meeting in Kanab is confirmed by news accounts and angry letters to the editors of various local papers.
2.
This was the mood in Fredonia when the condor plan was officially unveiled in 1995:
the writing of this chapter was also shaped by the Peregrine Fund's “A Review of the First Five Years of the California Condor Reintroduction Program”; Christopher Woods, Shawn Farry, and William Henrich, “Survival of Juvenile and Subadult Condors Released in Arizona,” unpublished, 2001; and by the arguments of Vicky J. Meretsky, Steven Beissinger, Noel Snyder, David Clendenen, and James Wiley, “The California Condor: A Flagship Adrift,”
Conservation Biology
(August 2000).
3.
New groups of condors were released on a regular basis:
Shawn Farry's accounts of the incredible amounts of work involved in managing condors match what he wrote in his field notes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: NOT THE SAME BIRD
1.
Farry paused to explain why the friendly condors were the most at risk:
accounts of condors landing on everything from power lines to airport runways were gleaned from various news reports and interviews with representatives of the California Condor Recovery program.
2.
Burnett said he'd been worrying about these birds since the day they arrived:
efforts to “train” the birds to act like “wild” condors were gathered the same way as above.