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Condor: To the Brink and Back--The Life and Times of One Giant Bird

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American condors are not an easy bird to love, at least for many people. Their points of unattractiveness are many. The condor is a vulture, a creature that eats dead and rotting things by sticking its bald, red, ugly head into carcasses. When it needs to cool its feet, it urinates on them. Its sense of interior design for the caves in which it nests is to decorate the walls with feces and vomit. John Nielson, in _Condor: To the Brink and Back - The Life and Times of One Giant Bird_ (HarperCollins) admits to all this ugliness, but says the images vanish when the bird takes flight: "You may think there's no chance you could ever give a damn about this bird, but take my word for it: once you see the condor soaring, it owns you." The birds have inspired a great deal of fervent enthusiasm, which has of course pitted enthusiasts against such types as farmers and developers, but has also divided those who want to save the birds into warring factions when they disagree on the fundamentals of how to do so. The condor has survived, but even Nielsen admits it has long been a species with no ecological value. It has survived, barely so, despite its involvement with humans and now directly because of them.

The birds are amazing in many ways. They are one of the largest of flying birds, with a ten foot wing span. The finger-like feathers at the end of those wings are almost two feet long. As big as condors are, they were small scavenger birds compared to some of the others 1.6 million years ago in the Pleistocene, when they would have fed on mammoths, sloths, and saber-toothed cats. As Nielsen says, we'd pay plenty to get mammoths and saber-tooths back; what's it worth to keep an animal with the same history? Condors started being afflicted by humans who wiped out different mammalian species in the mid-1700s, and then by hunters who left their prey full of lead, and then by strychnine used to poison varmints, and then by collectors of their feathered skins and their eggs. By 1982 there were only about two dozen left. A great deal of basic research had to be done on the birds to get real understanding of how they lived. It was not until the 1980s, for instance, that it was learned by chance that condors are among the birds that "double clutch," laying a second egg in a season if they lose the first one. This meant that one egg could go to the zoo without making the flock smaller. Crews of condor-fanciers wore themselves out tagging condors in the wild or collecting the eggs; they called themselves "The Zombie Patrol" because as they staggered to the condor nest caves they were "filthy, smelly, bleeding, starving, stiff, and utterly exhausted." Eggs brought back (in a special padded suitcase) were hatched in the zoos. A program of simply tagging and releasing birds in the wild did not work; eventually all the last birds wound up as captives.

There has been enough success in captive breeding that condors raised in pens have been released into the wild. No one really can predict how this will go. Chicks raised this way are often fed by hand, or at least by hand puppet, a covering for a hand that looks very much like an adult condor head coming down with food in its beak. This was supposed to let chicks sense that they were in a condor family, but one keeper said, "It only took the chicks a few days to figure out that there were people behind the puppets." Wild birds do not need to be thinking of people as a source for nutrition (or for any other blessings, given how we have treated them). There was a program of "aversive therapy" to keep them from being too affectionate to or curious about humans, and another to teach them not to land on power lines. There are important philosophical issues here; are such birds raised so unnaturally really natural members of the environment, and what is it that we have gotten for the millions that have been spent to get them back in the air? If you only count numbers, there are about a hundred condors flying free now, which is a real success, although some biologists think this only shows how badly we have failed to keep the environment a place where condors could continue to make their homes independently. Perhaps it is only appropriate that this strange bird, hideously ugly in appearance and fabulously beautiful in the skies, should bring out the best and the worst in us, and that its unresolved story should be filled with ambivalent messages.

If cats have nine lives, then the California condor as a species must be their equal. These birds have stepped to the edge of the extinction cliff and ALMOST fallen to a crushing collapse. After reading their story, you have to wonder if the creator was playing a cruel joke on this ancient and giant bird. First, with the exception of the huge black body and their graceful soaring, they aren't what you would call "easy on the eyes." They have a number of disgusting habits, and to top it off, they settled on Southern California as home (i.e., this place is being consumed by development at an alarming rate).

Condors to the Brink and Back - covers this bird's life history all the way to the release of zoo raised birds into the wilds of California and Arizona. With each chapter that John Nielsen writes in their life history I felt like, "Okay, this is it. These birds aren't going to survive this one." In the end, the species (read: humans) which puts them against the ropes, is ultimately the same species which comes to their rescue. Nielsen introduces all the key players in what at times resembles a less-than-unified effort to save the mighty condor.

Nearing the end of the book, what becomes apparent is man's role as the crutch the fragile condor must lean against to survive. As more condors raised in captivity are released into the wild, their dependency on wildlife biologists and zoo care-takers can begin to crumble. Encouraging news about California condors breeding and fledging new birds in their natural habitat is happening with greater frequency and spreading over a wider range including Mexico.

Their longer term survival looks brighter and brighter. But some of the threats that put these birds on the brink of collapse are still present today in the form of lead pellets and bullets in downed game which the condors ingest and the ever shrinking range land which they inhabit. For the time being, we have the California condor back to grace our skies, and play an important role as one of nature's big body snatchers.

A bit more than two decades ago the actual number of California condors had dwindled to roughly two dozen birds. If the species was to avoid extinction drastic measures were called for. There were many schools of thought as to how to deal with this impending environmental tragedy. Some even opined that the it would be best to just let the condor simply fade into history. "Condor: To The Brink And Back--The Life and Times of One Giant Bird" chronicles the struggles of those groups and individuals who were determined to save these ancient birds from almost certain extinction. Author John Nielson offers up a fairly comprehesive history of the species and explains the circumstances that nearly wiped the California condor from the face of the earth.

As Nielson explains, the California condor is a relic from the Pleistocene era. In those prehistoric times giant North American mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths and oversize bison roamed vast areas of what would eventually become the American West. And so there was no shortage of carcasses available to scavengers like ravens, vultures and much larger birds like the California condor. When these giant creatures succumbed to a cataclysmic enviromental event some 10000 years ago one might expect that the California condor would be doomed as well. This is a logical assumption but what I was quite surprised to learn in "Condor" is that what actually saved these birds along the California coast were whales. Now condors would feed on the carcasses of dead whales that washed up on shore, Add the huge numbers of sea lions and seals to the available food supply and the California condor would be just fine after all. That is until events like the Gold Rush of 1849 would change the landscape of this previously wild territory forever.

Fast forward to the 1980's. So much had happened over the previous 130 years and just about all of it to the detriment of the California condor. If drastic action is not taken right away then condors will be extinct within 20 years. There are only 24 birds left. Most environmentalists favor a plan to capture all the remaining birds to breed in captivity. However, a minority of environmentalists considered this concept to be absolutely outrageous and bitterly opposed the plan. In "Condor", John Nielson introduces us to leading figures on both sides of this controversial question. He chronicles what steps were eventually taken and opines how things have turned out thus far. He also speculates on the uncertain future these colossal creatures face in the 21st century. For the most part I found "Condor" to be absolutely captivating.

The struggle to save this ancient species is just one small facet of the ongoing debate over environmental policy in this country. We all need to read more about such issues so that we might make more informed decisions at the ballot box. John Nielson has given us a book that is at once very readable, highly informative and quite entertaining to boot. Recommended.

If you're squeamish, you may not be attracted to a book on a really large birds that eats dead animals carcasses. When the opening paragraph compares trapping these birds to waiting in a shallow grave, you may consider if you have the stomach for this material. But if you can read with an objective eye, you may be rewarded by this fascinating account of the project that prevented the extinction of the California condor.

Written in a journalist style for lay readers, this book is not a natural history primer. Enough science is included for the lay reader to understand what the biologists and wildlife managers are doing but readers are not overwhelmed with technical details. Individuals (people and birds) are featured to personalize the story.

I found particularly interesting how condors in re-established populations had been impacted by the human manipulation. Birds raised by people, even when people tried to raise them as much like condors as possible, did not act in the same ways the old "wild" condors did before we trapped them for captive breeding. It seems that while people managed to prevent their extinction, we caused condors to lose the cultural knowledge parents taught offspring about how to act like a "wild" condors. While we claim to have saved the species, we may not have saved all the qualities of the wild condors we hoped to perpetuate for the future. This raises interesting questions about animal behavior and learning, our relationship to wild species, and the true nature of "wildness."

This is a really interesting book. Nielsen writes very well, and with an evident passion arising from his boyhood experiences with condors in southern California. Nielsen tells the story of the condor, what little we know of its history before the nineteenth century, the slaughter of the birds and the stealing of its eggs, and finally the sometimes comical efforts to save this profound species from extinction. The book is equally appealing to readers who are simply seeking a good story, and to those who are involved in other kinds of environmental protection efforts.

One particular part of the story surprised me. Nielsen interviewed Sandy Wilbur, the government biologist charged with developing a plan to save the condor immediately after the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973. According to Nielsen, Wilbur became a Christian after reading a book by C.S. Lewis, and it was his Christian beliefs that influenced his desire to preserve the condor. Wilbur believed that the condor was special because it was created by God, even though the bird had long outlived its evolutionary significance and was not necessary for any current ecosystem. This is a different kind of motivation for saving biodiversity, and the story is a nice complement to the many other individuals who have struggled to save such a memorable bird.

How one large bird journeyed to the very edge of extinction and came back makes for an exciting story: especially when related by a NPR environmental correspondent as in CONDOR; TO THE BRINK AND BACK - THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ONE GIANT BIRD. Here is where passionate reporting blends best with science, producing a moving story of how a small group of committed people refused to allow the condor to become extinct, joining forces to gather the last remaining wild condors to a pair of zoos where they were encouraged to breed with other captives. John Nielsen is a native Californian as well as an environmental writer, so he's in the perfect position to provide a survey of both California environmental politics and processes and natural history in this compelling account.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

John Nielsen has clearly done his homework when it comes to understanding the fascinating history of the California Condor. He not only takes us through the natural history of condors from the Pleistocene to the present, he also introduces us to the remarkable cast of characters who have worked diligently for almost a century to prevent this species from disappearing. Written in an easy, engaging style, "Condor" combines ecology, history, and gossip to create a vivid picture of the challenges involved in saving a species that was more at home in the age of the mammoths than in the age of McMansions.

If you are looking to be enlightened about the natural history of the California condor, look elsewhere.
This book instead, focuses more on the human story of the condors decline and our own response in saving this bird from the brink of extintion. I would argue that you cannot separate the human story from the condor's because we are so deeply entwined.
Reading this account really brings out the bitter differences in the scientic community between the hands off approach and those who want to save the condor by contolling every aspect of their lives. I alway knew the condor was a very contensious issue among many and my own feeling are mixed.
What brought me around to the opion that this amazing relic of the past is worth saving was not this book but seeing freeflying condors soaring above the Pacific Coast in Big Sur. I highly recommend this to everyone!
The only reason I did not give this book five stars is that Nielsen has the habit of putting himself into the book, instead of letting the characters and personalities of the people shine. It's fine if you are a writer of John McPhee's caliber but it is less effective in Nielsen's writing.

I picked up the 2006 edition of this book and enjoyed it thoroughly from cover to cover. I was a little put off at the start by how "the bird gets into your head". It sounded a little banal, and gave me concern that the book would be full of heavy-handed cliches, but the book immediately took off and kept soaring to the end. A great, engrossing read. It appears to be very thoroughly researched to boot. Just a few typos, though, which I expect were fixed in the 2007 ed.