When the sanctuary was deemed safe to re-enter, Burnett confirmed his suspicions: 11 condors had died, including two chicks in nests. ![]() The so-called Dolan Fire, which consumed 125,000 acres along the Big Sur Coast and injured 19 firefighters, incinerated pens, razed the research building and displaced the 101 free-flying birds that the organization tracks.įor two tense weeks biologists were cut off from the preserve, keeping tabs on survivors by electronic transmitter. ![]() Of all that human monkeying, perhaps none inflicted more harm on condors than the wildfire, set by an arsonist in an illegal marijuana grow, that swept through Ventana’s 80-acre condor sanctuary last August. Which would be fitting: For hundreds of years we’ve been monkeying with them. This bird, too habituated to humans to be released to the wild, resides at the Phoenix Zoo. This article is a selection from the June 2021 issue of Smithsonian magazine BuyĬaptive breeding programs in California, Oregon and Idaho are essential to condor survival. Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12 It happens so often that I’m almost convinced that they are just monkeying with us.” “They’re marking you in a way, giving you a heads-up that they know you’re here and that they can fly and you can’t. “I think they purposely track their shadow on the ground,” Burnett says. Suddenly, we’re eclipsed by the shadow of another condor soaring overhead. A spectacular bird with a wingspan of almost ten feet, it stands there puffing out its chest like a best-actor nominee on Oscar night. Sounds like I’m talking about a mammal, not a bird, but that’s why I love working with them.”Īs we clamber up a trail on Marble Peak, Burnett spies a condor roosting in a tangle of branches atop a ponderosa pine. “They’re slow breeding, very social, and can live about 80 years, though they average about 60. “They have similar traits to us,” he says with a rueful chuckle. “I’m like, ‘God, I didn’t know there was a bird this big that still existed!’” Through his binoculars, the vultures’ fearsome appearance-fleshy heads, spiky ruffs, flame-red eyes-makes them seem enigmatic and prehistoric, as if they were designed by a committee of paleontologists.īurnett has monitored Big Sur’s flock since Ventana-the only nonprofit in the state that prepares captive-bred condors for life in the wild-began releasing the rare, imperiled raptors in these canyons 24 years ago. “Every time I spot a condor, it’s like I’m seeing one for the first time,” says Joe Burnett, a senior biologist with the Ventana Wildlife Society in Monterey and program manager for the California Condor Recovery Program. ![]() Wings fanning out at the tips like splayed fingers, the enormous creatures have whirled gracefully over Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park for hours, now and then giving a couple of deep flaps. The leaden sky above Big Sur looks as uninviting as cold oatmeal, the temperature is about 40, and tracing lazy circles on an updraft is a kettle of California condors.
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