It didn’t take long for wildlife biologists to swoop
down after a court decision cleared the way for bringing California
condors back to the Colorado Plateau. A federal judge ruled Oct. 16
that officials from San Juan County in Utah could not stop
reintroduction efforts since they could not prove harm from the
birds. Less than two weeks later, six young condors were en route
from zoos in Southern California and Boise, Idaho, to a holding pen
high on Arizona’s Vermilion Cliffs.
The birds
will adjust to their new surroundings in the pens until sometime in
December, when their feathers are ready for flight, says Eric
Howard of Grand Canyon Trust. In the meantime, they will gaze out
at a spectacular landscape that includes a power pole designed to
shock birds who land on it.
“These are the first
parent-raised chicks ever reintroduced in the wild,” explains
Howard. They’ve had no human contact and biologists want to keep it
that way, he says. Besides their power-pole lesson, the birds will
go through human aversion training where biologists beat them with
foam batons while screaming violently.
“They will
only associate humans with being probed and prodded and having
their tail feathers lifted unceremoniously,” says Howard.
Once the birds start flying on wings that span 9
feet, they will be lured (with planted carrion) south toward the
Grand Canyon, says Rob Marshall of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. But even if they head north, toward Zion, Bryce,
Canyonlands and the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument, the birds should find suitable habitat. Although 17 wild
condors now live in California, these six birds will be the first
to live on the Colorado Plateau since 1924.
–
Elizabeth
Manning
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Some big birds come back.
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