Size california condor5/19/2023 ![]() I searched the sky for condors, which are capable of soaring as high as 15,000 feet and traveling 200 miles in a day. Birds were everywhere-woodpeckers hammering on trees, towhees hopping toward mud puddles, a hawk piercing the quiet with its shrill call. Still, I started down the trail, through an oak and pine forest, leaves crunching underfoot, the air smelling like a Christmas wreath. This made it sound like I’d have more luck spotting a condor in the campground than after a strenuous hike to the park’s rocky peaks. “Otherwise, they sometimes hang out above the campground.” “If you’re on the high peaks at daybreak or sunset, you might see one,” she said. ![]() This time, I snagged a parking space, shoehorning between vehicles near one of the trailheads, and asked a ranger where I could see a condor. ![]() The last time I visited, it had been so full that I had to turn around at the entrance. Pinnacles is also one of the smallest national parks and, thanks to its proximity to San Francisco, often crowded. In 2003, California condors were reintroduced into the park, and now it’s home to a fluctuating flock of around a hundred of them. So I’m not sure whether my interest comes from ecological hope or an urge to see a rare creature while I can.Įither way, on a cold morning last November, I drove to Pinnacles National Park, east of the Salinas Valley. Lead poisoning remains a threat, and the bird’s future is far from guaranteed. Despite extensive time and resources spent, the condor is still critically endangered. Even as climate change bears down and some scientists say we’re entering an era of mass extinction, the preservation of the California condor shows that we can repair some environmental damage. I kept thinking about this throughout 2020, a year filled with environmental disasters, from wildfires to melting permafrost to a worldwide pandemic caused by a mutating virus. There are now around 300 condors in the wild, most living in Central and Southern California, with smaller populations in Arizona and Utah. Thanks to conservation efforts, it has made a comeback. Joy Lanzendorfer and Kelly Sorenson, Executive Director of the Ventana Wildlife Society, joined Alta Live.īut we didn’t lose the condor. The idea that we could lose North America’s largest flying bird-a vulture with a wingspan of almost 10 feet-struck me as tragic even then. At that point, in 1987, they were taken into captivity, and their future looked bleak. When I was a kid, there were only nine wild condors left. But the California condor stands out because it came so close to extinction. It’s on a list I keep in my head of animals I’d like to glimpse in their natural habitats, which includes, in no particular order, a male moose with full antlers, a whale, a ringtailed cat, a hedgehog, a swarm of monarch butterflies, and any kind of monkey. I’ve always wanted to see a California condor in the wild.
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