The first condor to be provided with a radio transmitter was IC1 (shown here with Noel Snyder, left, and Pete Bloom), who was trapped in the Tehachapi Mountains. Transmitters make it possible to track the progress of condors in the wild. (Helen Snyder, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service)
They found that one of the eggs was completely rotten. They then left a dummy egg and took the other to see if it was viable. It turned out to be in poor shape, but the skilled staff managed to hatch it at the zoo. Meanwhile, the unlikely trio was still caring for the dummy egg in the wild. Just before the egg should have hatched, it was replaced with a healthy, captive-laid egg. A chick duly hatched, but despite the presence of three potential caregivers, one of the females was left alone—first with the egg and then with the chick—for eleven days straight. And when the second female finally returned, instead of helping to nurture the three-day-old chick—she killed it. That was certainly not a very successful breeding season! Still, it was encouraging that the three would-be parents had nested in a suitable location and among them had at least hatched an egg.
Trash and Other Troubles
The following year, chicks were hatched in three nests. But initial excitement turned to dismay when, at about four months old, all three youngsters died. When they were subsequently examined, it was found that the parents, in addition to providing them with normal food, had been feeding them trash—items such as bottle tops, small pieces of hard plastic and glass, and so on.
Unfortunately, this has become a tradition in this population—and they are not alone, as vultures in Africa have also been observed feeding trash to their young. Biologists believe that the parents are picking up these inappropriate objects as substitutes for the bone fragments thought to help in bone development.
Today the recovery team keeps close watch on the nests to record parental behavior and chick development, and they check the health of eggs and chicks at regular thirty-day intervals—with a mandate to intervene if necessary. And it was necessary with the only chick hatched in the 2006 breeding season. This is a fascinating story. For one thing, the parents had both been considered too young to produce an egg—the female was only six years old and the male, only five. They had not even acquired adult plumage, and finding them with a nest and egg was a huge surprise. Mike told me that they were all worried because of the youth and inexperience of the parents—would they be able to sustain interest in the egg during the long incubation period?
So the team played a trick. Members took away the egg of the inexperienced couple, which would not hatch for another month, and left in its place an egg from the captive breeding program that was on the verge of hatching. The young parents, hearing the vocalizations of the chick inside the new egg and the pecking at the inside of the shell, instantly became very attentive. The chick hatched successfully and was well cared for.
When its health was monitored after thirty days, all seemed to be going well, although some trash fragments had been brought to the cave floor. The team spread five pounds of bone fragments around, hoping this might mitigate the extraordinary passion for feeding trash, and left, hoping for the best. The sixty-day checkup also found the chick healthy. The parents had left more trash fragments lying around, but the metal detector—now standard veterinary equipment!—showed that the chick had not swallowed any. However, when they checked up after ninety days, they found a very sick, underweight, and undersize chick that had swallowed a great deal of trash. It was obvious he would die if this was not removed.
Mike picked up the chick and took it back to the Los Angeles Zoo—which does veterinary work on all the wild condors in California—for emergency surgery. Meanwhile, another member of the team stayed overnight to keep the parents out of the nest site—for had they found it empty, they would almost certainly have left. Inside that chick was an extraordinary array of trash, ranging from bottle caps to small pieces of metal and hard plastic, all tangled in cow hair. I saw the collection, and it was hard to believe it all came from one bird, let alone a chick. No wonder it was sick! The surgery went well, and twenty hours later the youngster was returned to its nest by helicopter and delivered on the end of a rope by a search-and-rescue specialist. During this operation the parents were right behind the humans, peering past them at the nest—and five minutes after the helicopter left, they were back with their beloved offspring.
Without his load of indigestible trash, the chick’s health improved. But just before the 120-day check, the field biologist on duty, observing the nest through a high-powered scope, noticed the chick playing with three pieces of glass, swallowing them and spitting them out. And sure enough, when team members went in to check him at the prescribed time, they could feel something hard in his crop. Fortunately, they were able to massage the objects gently out of the crop and into the throat, then remove them with forceps—they were the same three pieces of glass that he had been seen playing with. This preoccupation with trash is certainly one of the worst behavioral problems that the team must try to solve.
One suggestion to reduce behavioral problems was to release some of the original wild-caught birds from the 1980s to serve as role models. This was done, but while these birds do indeed represent a priceless behavioral resource, part of their behavior is wide-ranging foraging, which can make them especially susceptible to lead poisoning—and in fact, one of the original females did suffer serious lead poisoning after her return to the wild. Noel feels strongly that no more should be released until the lead-contamination problem has been solved.
Faith in the Future
From the very start, Noel told me, nearly all program personnel have agreed that this issue is critical. But for more than twenty years—since the first sick condors were diagnosed with lead poisoning—nothing was done to remove the source of the problem, largely because no good substitutes for lead bullets existed. By 2007, however, a variety of nontoxic ammunition had come on the market, and on October 13 that year Bill AB 821 prohibiting the use of lead bullets for hunting large game in the range of the California condor was signed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and subsequently passed by the legislature. This was the result of pressure on the lawmakers from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and many conservationists.
Some environmentalists felt that the bill was a cop-out—that so long as the bullets were made, it would be hard to enforce the law. But when I talked with Governor Schwarzenegger about this, he said that the range of the condors was so vast, there was not much of California left where lead bullets could be used. He thought manufacturers would not think it worthwhile to continue making them. In any event, passing this bill is a major step forward, and I, for one, congratulate the governor for supporting it.
Although the future of the released individuals is not assured, the investment, in time and the commitment and dedication of the men and women involved, has been a success—for without intervention, the California condor would most certainly have gone extinct. Instead, there are nearly 300 of these magnificent birds, and 146 of them are out in the wild, soaring the skies above Southern California, the Grand Canyon region of Arizona, Utah, and Baja California.
Those who watch the condors in the wild are moved. Mike Wallace, one of the field biologists who oversaw the release of captive-bred condors in the Baja, sent me a wonderful story about observing the mating rituals and unique personalities of these amazingly social birds (which you’ll find on our Web site). My friend Bill Woolam wrote to me about the wonder of seeing this giant bird when he was hiking in the Grand Canyon—watching the condor flying up and up with those huge and powerful wings, hearing the wings flapping and the air whistling through the feathers as the condor glides down—the music of flight. And Thane, too, recently wrote to me about the joy of seeing five of the fifty or so condors living near the Grand Canyon when he was rafting there in 2008.
The more people who have this kind of experience, and who realize how nearly this amazing bird vanished forever, the more they will
care. And their number is growing—there are legions of people who are passionate about California condors and their future. Noel, though officially retired, still feels a great personal commitment. The condor, he told me, “comes to dominate your life whether you like it or not.”
I have a legal permit to carry a twenty-six-inch-long wing feather from a condor. During my lectures, as Thane mentioned in his foreword, I love to take this by the quill and pull it, very slowly, from its cardboard tube. It is one of my symbols of hope and never fails to produce an amazed gasp from the audience. And, I think, a sense of reverence.
Archival photo. One of the original milu (Père David’s deer) herds relocated to Woburn Abbey. After the milu became extinct in China in 1900, the eleventh duke of Bedford gathered together the few remaining milu from European zoos and brought them to Woburn Abbey. Thanks to his foresight, the milu was likely saved from global extinction. (By kind permission of the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees of the Bedford Estate)
Milu or Père David’s Deer
(Elaphurus davidianus)
The first time I was able to see this rare and beautiful deer in its native homeland was in 1994, during my first visit to China. Dr. Guo Geng showed me round the Nan Haizi Milu Deer Park, just outside Beijing. Guo Geng is enthusiastic and passionate about his work, which includes the education outreach for this park. A small part of the park was like a zoo—enclosures held various deer and a few other hoofed animals—but there was also a large fenced-in wilderness area, complete with small lake, home to a herd of Père David’s deer—known in China as milu. How magnificent they looked grazing near the shore of the lake. They wore their grayish brown winter coats—but, said Guo Geng, their color changes to reddish brown during the summer. They are similar in size to the red deer of Scotland. One handsome male stood, seeming to look directly at me, proud and dignified. I could see no fences, no boundary to his wild space.
As I stood there watching the milu, my mind suddenly jumped far back in time. I vividly remembered visiting a herd of these deer on the duke of Bedford’s estate in England, and hearing that they were highly endangered and had originally come from China. That was in 1956, when I was working with a documentary film company in London and we were making a film at the estate. And now, forty years later, I was looking at some of the progeny of those very deer.
Extinction in China
Their story amazes me. The milu was once common in the open plains and marshes along China’s lower Yangtze River Basin. But, mainly as a result of habitat loss and probably some hunting, they were on the brink of extinction by 1900. The last known wild individual was shot in 1939 near the Yellow Sea. Fortunately for the survival of the species, the emperor of China had installed a large herd in his Imperial Hunting Park (Nan Haizi Park) near Beijing. The deer thrived in this park, which was surrounded by a forty-three-mile-long wall and guarded by a Tartar patrol.
In 1865, Père Armand David, a French Jesuit missionary, introduced the deer to the Western world. He had been passionately interested in nature from childhood, and had always wanted to go to China. He became a missionary, and his dream was realized when he was given a leave of absence for five months to tour in China. During this time, he collected numerous undescribed (at least to Westerners) plants and insects and sent them back to the natural history museum in Paris for study. He also described the golden monkey, some pheasants, and a squirrel, and was the first person to describe a giant panda to the West.
Historical photo of Père David himself, an extraordinary naturalist and explorer: savior of the milu. (Reprinted with the permission of the Deandreis-Rosati Memorial Archives, DePaul University, Chicago, IL)
During one of his travels, just outside Beijing, he came upon the wall that concealed the Imperial Hunting Park. Managing to look over, he saw some strange animals that looked a bit like reindeer, but he soon realized they were not. Back in Beijing, he tried to discover something about them and, failing, returned with an interpreter to the hunting park. Eventually, by providing some woolly caps and mittens to the guards (though one story says twenty silver pieces), he persuaded them to bring him some pieces of antlers and skin. Père David sent these precious specimens back to France, where they were examined and pronounced to be from a new species of deer—which was named in his honor.
There was a keen desire in Paris to obtain some live specimens. Eventually, after many failed attempts, the Chinese emperor was persuaded to gift three individuals to the French ambassador. Sadly they did not survive the arduous sea journey. But after further negotiations with the imperial staff, a few more pairs of the deer were gifted and this time arrived safely in Paris. There was much excitement about the arrival of the first Père David’s deer; eventually zoos in Germany and Belgium, as well as the Woburn Abbey park in England, also acquired specimens.
Soon there were approximately two dozen deer in Europe, in addition to the large herd remaining in China, and the survival of the species seemed assured. But in 1895, catastrophic floods devastated China, and a part of the wall surrounding the imperial park was destroyed. Many of the deer were killed by the floods; others that escaped through the breach in the wall were hunted and killed by the starving population. Still, between twenty and thirty survived in the park—enough to maintain the species. Alas, five years later they perished during the Boxer Rebellion, when troops occupied the imperial park and killed and ate every single deer.
Surviving in Europe
Thus the future of the deer depended on the few individuals in Europe—and the zoos found that they were reluctant to breed. When news of the slaughter of the last deer in China reached Herbrand, eleventh duke of Bedford, he realized the need to consolidate the scattered groups if the species was to be saved. Eventually he persuaded the various zoos to sell their animals, and by 1901 he had collected a total of fourteen Père David’s deer in the park at Woburn Abbey—the last individuals in existence. There were seven females (two of whom were barren), five males (one of whom established himself as the dominant stag), and two youngsters. It required years of patient management before these last survivors of a once abundant species began to breed.
In 1918, when the population numbered around ninety animals, they suffered yet another major setback: World War I caused widespread food shortages in Britain, which meant not enough food for the exotic deer, and the population was reduced to just fifty. After the war, numbers again began to increase, but in 1946, when the population of Père David’s deer had risen to three hundred, World War II created more shortages of food—and in addition, the herds were threatened by nearby enemy bombing. At this point, the duke of Bedford realized it would be wise to spread out the breeding population. By 1970, there were breeding groups of Père David’s deer in centers all over the world, with over five hundred at Woburn Abbey alone.
Planning the Return of the Milu
The decision to try to reintroduce these Chinese deer to their homeland was the idea of the then marquis of Tavistock, later the fourteenth duke of Bedford. It was not an easy operation, but finally, in 1985, twenty-two Père David’s deer—which would henceforth be known as milu—set off from Woburn Abbey to Beijing, accompanied by one of their keepers. In 2006, during my annual visit to Beijing, I told Guo Geng that I needed to know more of the history of the deer’s return to China. He told me that I should talk to a Slovakian woman, Maja Boyd. We planned to meet in Beijing, but sadly that meeting never took place as her cousin died, suddenly, and she had to fly back to Slovakia. However, just before Christmas that year, we spoke by telephone—she was in Slovakia, and I was in Bournemouth.
By the end of the conversation, I felt I had tapped into Maja’s warm and giving personality. She wanted me to know that when her late husband had first taken her to America, she had watched a film about me and the Gombe chimpanzees. “I so badly wanted to do something like you!” she said. Her American husband had been a good friend of Lord Tavistock, as the duke of Bedford then was. And when Maja learned about his plan t
o send Père David’s deer to China, she was fascinated. “It was the deer,” she told me, “that took me to China.”
She would have loved to release the deer into a really wild place. “But,” she said, “the government chose the site, and we needed their full support.” And it made good sense, for the place chosen for the deer park was once part of the Imperial Hunting Park as well as being close to the center of government in Beijing.
Maja Boyd, a guardian of Père David’s deer, shown here with a hand-reared female deer at the Nan Haizi Milu Reserve, Beijing. The young deer’s mother died soon after giving birth. Maja told me that this deer “followed me around like a dog.” (Maja Boyd)
Maja had gone to inspect the area prior to the return of the deer. She found that part of it was a tree nursery—which was fine. But there was also a pig farm, which Maja felt was not appropriate. The government agreed to move the pigs. Then they had to block access for a stream that flowed through the area, since it was horribly polluted. They dug nine little wells to provide water for the animals and embarked on the major project: filling the lake with clean water.
The new arrivals deserved the best the Chinese could give them. But there was another major problem. The officials in charge of building the required quarantine sheds insisted that they be designed like the traditional stall for cows or horses—with a half door. No matter how often Maja explained that deer were different, and would immediately leap over a half door, the Chinese would not, or could not, believe her. Matters came to a head when Lord Tavistock’s eldest son, Andrew Howland, arrived to inspect the accommodations for his precious deer. He was horrified when he saw the row of sheds with half doors, and insisted that they physically break down the doors. After this the doors were rebuilt—correctly! Finally, all was ready.
Hope for Animals and Their World Page 6
