I began this book out of frustration.
A year or so earlier, I had pretty much decided that I wouldn't
write a book about California condors. I hadn't ruled out a broader
treatment of my 34-year career with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife
Service - with the condor years covered, of course - but it seemed
to me that there wasn't enough pertinent to say about my time
with the birds (1969-1981) to fill a whole book. It was, after
all, like water long gone over the dam. Anything that happened
prior to 1987, when the last wild California condors were taken
into captivity, seemed to have only marginal relevance to what
has happened since then.
I changed my mind after the book
review editor of the "The Condor" (the journal
of the Cooper Ornithological Society) invited me to evaluate the
latest entry onto the growing shelf of condor literature. I said
I would, and proceeded to read the book. To say I was disappointed
puts it too mildly. The authors, one of whom worked on the California
condor recovery program in the 1980s, announced their work as
the first accurate, objective, and non-embellished account of
the species and the efforts to save it. What I found was (in my
opinion) a series of unsupported and/or distorted criticisms of
the work of previous researchers, unconvincing new theories about
the condor, and diatribes against people and groups who in the
authors' opinion had thwarted their personal efforts to save the
species.
My review of the book was a negative
one. There wasn't space in the journal (nor was it the proper
forum) to discuss all the problems I had with the contents, so
most of my coverage was of a few sections that I found most troubling.
I finished my review stating my hope that this book would be neither
the last nor the best book to come out of the condor recovery
program. The editors thought "nor the best" was
too provocative, so we cut that phrase from the printed version.
Still, it stuck in my mind that the volume that I had reviewed
might turn out to be the one that people read and remembered.
That, in my opinion, would do a real disservice to all the researchers
and managers who had been part of the monumental efforts to save
this fascinating species. It also would do a disservice to all
those people who wanted to know the truth about the species and
the condor recovery program. Finally, the book did nothing to
convey what to me had been the cliff-hanging excitement - both
biologically and politically - of working with one of the most
endangered birds in the world. Maybe there was a place on the
shelf for my two bits on the subject, after all.
These are my credentials for writing
about the California condor. My 12 years researching the condor
were far longer than anyone before or since my time can claim.
(Several people - most notably John Borneman [National Audubon
Society], Jan Hamber [Santa Barbara Natural History Museum] Michael
Wallace [San Diego Zoo], and Lloyd Kiff [The Peregrine Fund] -
have been associated with the recovery program for more years
than I was, but not in a research capacity.) I am the only person
ever to attempt to review, compile, and analyze all the information
available on condors in libraries and museums worldwide. I was
the main author of the California Condor Recovery Plan, the first
trapping and radiotelemetry plan, and the first captive breeding
proposal. Even after I officially left the condor recovery program,
I served until 1984 as Chief of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's
endangered species office for the western United States, and so
was in touch with the condor events from a policy standpoint.
Finally (and sadly), I was the last biologist to work with a significant
number of wild California condors, and to be able to judge in-person
some of the habits and behavior of what was still a somewhat viable
wild population.
This isn't a book about recent attempts to establish new populations
of California condors. In fact, it says little about all that
has happened since I lost close contact with the condor project
in about 1984. What I've chosen to do is tell my personal story
of my time with the California condors, what I did and what I
learned (or think I learned) about them from the Pleistocene to
their last stand in the wild. To borrow from the title of Harry
Harris' excellent 1941 history of the species, this is "the
annals of Gymnogyps" to 1984.
I haven't compiled an event-by-event history of our knowledge
of the condor. I've tried to include enough so that you can understand
why the condor population was in the shape it was when I came
on the job in 1969. If you want more, Harry Harris' "Annals"
is very thorough and very entertaining. My own monograph, which
is still available in libraries and in many natural history book
catalogs (both on-line and off) has an annotated bibliography
of just about everything that was written about the condor - scientific
and popular, non-fiction and fiction - up to 1977. And, of course,
Carl Koford's treatise on the condor remains - even after all
these years - the best thing written on the basic behavior of
California condors.
As I said above, I started this book
out of frustration. But as I perused old field notes, reviewed
almost-forgotten reports, and re-examined some of my early thoughts
and hypotheses, the Condor Years came fully alive to me, again.
I re-lived some of the exhilaration of being on a high, windswept
ridge, with not another soul within ten miles, watching condors
boil up out of shadowy canyons below. I remembered the intensity
of life-and-death discussions I held with vulture experts from
all over the world. The frustration of seeing the condor recovery
program taken over - and almost destroyed - by people who had
no understanding of the condor or its socio-political environment
came over me anew. The desolation and anger of being dumped from
the program at its most critical time was sometimes too much to
take, and more than once I had to put the research away and do
something else until the hurt subsided. All the emotions swept
over me at various times. For better and for worse, I was truly
back in Condor Country.
Is "Condor Tales" an accurate, objective, and non-embellished account of the species and the efforts to save it? Probably not entirely, but it's my view of what happened, much of it written at the time it happened. I can't guarantee that it's "the truth." I can promise you some chapters in the condor tale that you've never heard before.
Sandy Wilbur
January 2004