Will Condor Be Latest In List
Of Threats To N.M. Ranchers?

By David Bowser

KINGSTON, N.M. — The California condor may be coming to New Mexico soon.

Brought back from the edge of extinction in California in the 1980s, condors were introduced to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon earlier this decade. Now, wildlife officials are talking to large private landowners in New Mexico about establishing the birds in the Land of Enchantment.

The bad news for New Mexico ranchers is that the birds' primary food supply is domestic livestock, sheep and calves.

The good news for New Mexico ranchers who are facing land restrictions from other endangered species is that the California condor is not threatened because of lack of habitat, although it has yet to be determined what effect that fact will have on the area where condors may be introduced.

What threatened the extinction of the California condor, says Noel Snyder, former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director of the condor reintroduction program in California, was not habitat, but environmental contaminants.

Initially, loss of habitat was thought to be a major player in the demise of the giant bird, and agricultural chemicals, such as DDT, were thought to have affected the small, thin-shelled eggs the birds were laying in the 1960s, but extensive research proved otherwise.

"More research is critical," says Snyder of plants and animals that are threatened or endangered, "more research of each individual species."

The case of the condor did not fit the mold of other endangered species such as the peregrine falcon.

After three decades of studying the condor, habitat was ruled out as a critical factor and the thin-shelled eggs, which in other species were traced to farm chemical use, were attributed to the genetics of a particular population of females in the 1960s. The key, Snyder says, was the size of egg, not the thinness of the shell.

Snyder says what researchers finally found was that condors were suffering and dying from lead poisoning. They were ingesting bullets and shot from carrion upon which they feasted. The toxic lead contaminants shut down the bird's digestive system, causing it to starve to death. (Do we detect in efforts to broaden this bird’s range the whiff of a well-veiled plan to choke out hunting? — Ed.)

Added to this a mortality rate of 25 percent among condors, six years to reach maturity and the fact that condors lay only one egg in a clutch, their declining numbers were hardly surprising.

"Mortality was a problem," Snyder says.

Nor are man-made dangers the only thing that threatens condors. Their major competitor is the eagle.

"Eagles dominate over condors," Snyder says. "Condors are the last in line to eat."

Eagles also threaten condor nesting, raiding the spartan nests in potholes along edges of cliffs to destroy condor eggs and young. Ravens, too, present a threat to condors.

"You need to be concerned about ravens and eagles in a restoration program," Snyder says.

Yet, Snyder says, condors are one of the most approachable birds in the world. Researchers could easily get within 20 feet of the birds without disturbing them.

The largest bird in the Western Hemisphere, condors can weigh more than 20 pounds and have a wingspan of 10 feet.

Limited to Southern California since the 1940s, California Condors once ranged from British Columbia, Canada, to Baja California. There is evidence to suggest, Snyder says, that condors or their predecessors lived in New Mexico and Arizona thousands of years ago.

"It is most impressive in flight," Snyder says. "It's a startling thing to see and hear."

He says the condor is a soaring bird. It is big enough that continued flapping soon tires the bird, but it can float on thermal drafts high in the sky for hours.

Snyder, who led the California condor research program from 1980 to 1986, says studying the creature was at best difficult.

"The major hurdle was counting birds that range 50 to 100 miles a day," Snyder says.

When Snyder took over research on the bird, there were barely 20 of them left, and, despite decades of study, no one really understood much about them. Efforts had been made to save condors from extinction for years, Snyder says. As early as the 1930s and 1940s, sanctuaries were set aside for them, but that didn't work.

It wasn't until the 1980s, using radio telemetry and captive breeding, which were controversial at the time, that researchers began understanding the bird and the declining population trend was reversed.

Researchers began using solar powered radios in 1982 that could be picked up by receivers 100 miles away.

It was because of the radio transmitters attached to individual birds that scientists could track them. The condors would hunt in the foothills of the San Joaquin Valley, a broad grassland, but they roosted in the central mountains 25 to 30 miles away.

There is still much that is not known about condors, Snyder says, and much that is speculation.

Condors appear to be attracted to white, shiny objects such as Styrofoam cups. It is thought this has to do with nutritional balance in the diet. Since condors generally eat soft tissue, they get little calcium. The birds may be attracted to white objects thinking they are calcium-containing bones.

Snyder says he's concerned that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is not pursuing the research in which he was so heavily involved. There are still problems to be dealt with in connection with the condor and still solutions that are known to some of these problems that have yet to be implemented.