Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from Extinction - Softcover

Moir, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1493076655 ISBN 13: 9781493076659

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2023

Synopsis

“A heart-stopping saga of the rescue from the very brink of extinction of one of the grandest of all birds.”—Thomas Lovejoy, president of the Amazon Biodiversity Center.

RETURN OF THE CONDOR is the riveting account of one of the most dramatic attempts to save a species from extinction in the history of modern conservation. Features a new Afterword by the author.

With the condor’s population down to only twenty-two birds in the 1980s and their very survival in doubt, the condor recovery team flouted conventional wisdom and pursued a controversial strategy to pull the bird back from the brink of extinction. Thus began the ongoing, decades-long program to reestablish America’s largest bird in its ancient home in Western skies.

Award-winning science writer John Moir takes readers into the backcountry to get to know the recovery program scientists as well as some of the individual condors. These are stories of peril, uncertainty, and controversy. Woven throughout these tales of heartbreak and triumph is the extraordinary dedication of the humans who have sometimes risked their lives for this charismatic, intelligent, and social bird.

Despite the program’s remarkable successes, the condor’s narrative is still unfolding with a number of challenges remaining. This includes the dilemma of lead poisoning among free-flying condors that is a major obstacle to the bird’s recovery.

The new Afterword presents a compelling examination of the progress and continuing adversity facing the condor recovery effort since the first edition of the book was published.

Finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize

from the Stanford University Libraries

Honorable Mention from the National Association of Science Writers

About this title

About the Author

John Moir is an environmental journalist who has been reporting on the condor’s story for more than 20 years. Moir has written for the New York Times, Smithsonian, Washington Post,Audubon, and many other publications. He is the author of two nonfiction books, has contributed to four anthologies, and has received more than two dozen writing awards.

From the Back Cover

Return of the Condor is a riveting account of one of the most dramatic attempts to save a species from extinction in the history of modern conservation. The California condor, North America's largest bird, lives 50 years or more, is highly intelligent, often mates for life, can fly 150 miles in a day, and was believed by Native Americans to have supernatural powers. But its strength and endurance were not enough to save it from near-extinction. Human greed and ignorance caused the great bird's decline. Human ingenuity and insight became its only hope. Down to only twenty-two individuals in the 1980s, the condor owes its survival and recovery to a remarkable team of scientists who flouted conventional wisdom and pursued the most controversial means to save it. Conservationists and scientists have fought what at times has seemed a quixotic battle to save the species. Theirs is a story of passion, courage, and bitter controversy, one that created a national debate over how to save America's largest bird. Return of the Condor chronicles this epic story. We meet Jan Hamber, the biologist who made the agonizing decision to capture AC9, the young male who was the last living wild condor; Carl Koford, the brilliant scientist whose flawed conclusions delayed a captive-breeding program until it was almost too late; and two of the condors whose survival was critical, including AC9 himself. There is tragedy and triumph in their stories. Today, condors are more numerous and far easier to see than at any time in the past century, and their expanding territory is home to millions of Americans. For America's 52 million birders and anyone who cares about saving our natural heritage, this inspiring story shows what happens when we commit ourselves to working with nature instead of against it."Pulling the California condor back from the brink of extinction has been difficult and expensive. But this fine book by John Moir makes abundantly clear why preserving magnificent beings like our once-more wild condors is one of twenty-first-century society's more important obligations."--Alan Tennant author of On The Wing: To The Edge Of The Earth With The Peregrine Falcon

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

RETURN OF THE CONDOR excerpt:

Chapter 1
The Last Condor



Jan Hamber faced an agonizing dilemma. The condor she had been tracking—the last member of its species to exist in the wild—had approached a trap site on remote Hudson Ranch north of Los Angeles. It was late on a spring day in 1987, and Hamber watched through binoculars as AC9 landed near the stillborn calf that served as bait. The condor circled the carcass, keeping his distance while a Golden Eagle fed on the calf. The sunlight accented AC9's intelligent eyes and bare, salmon-colored head. An ink-black ruff of feathers circled the base of his neck. As AC9 stretched and refolded his wings, the undersides flashing white, the sun sank lower over the chaparral-covered hills. But AC9 flew away without touching the carcass.
Hamber followed the bird in her car, tracking his radio signal to a roost site on nearby Brush Mountain. She wore a wool cap over her short brown hair, and a bulky light-blue goosedown jacket to ward off the cool air settling into the canyons. The tiny crow's feet at the corners of her eyes were evidence of the many hours she spent squinting through binoculars and spotting scopes.
When Jan first encountered AC9 in 1980, he was still a downy young chick in his nest, and over the years she had watched him mature into an adult bird. She had a photograph from two months earlier of AC9 looking down from a bare oak tree as biologists carried away the only other remaining wild condor, which they had just captured. A mere 27 condors were left in the world: the recovery effort Jan worked for represented the last hope for saving the species from extinction. And AC9 was crucial to their success.
Darkness forced Hamber to make a momentous decision. "I knew what would happen," she told me years later, the memories still vivid. "AC9 had seen the carcass, but he hadn't eaten yet. He would come back the next day." She took a breath and considered her next move. Should she notify her team of fellow condor biologists to set a trap for AC9 in the morning? Or should she simply turn her car homeward, leaving the last wild condor his freedom? "I realized not a single soul in the world knew about this except me. I could call in the team to capture AC9. But if I didn't make that call, no one would ever know."
Jan checked the dashboard clock. Doing nothing was a decision by default—she needed to take charge, to make up her mind. Had any other human ever confronted such a quandary, she wondered: knowingly capturing the last individual of a species? Despite the work of all the science panels and government agencies, tonight this decision was hers alone. The future of the last wild condor, and perhaps of the species itself, rested in her hands. Earlier in the day she'd listened as the call of a Red-tailed Hawk echoed down a nearby canyon; she knew her call would reverberate even louder and longer, quite probably through the rest of her life. She thought again: This recovery effort is the last hope.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1493076655
• ISBN 13: 9781493076659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272