Andean Condors Defy Extinction; Californian Cousins Comeback Slowly
9/19/99
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Andean Condors Defy Extinction; Californian Cousins
Comeback Slowly
Source: The Chicago Tribune
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 19, 1999
Byline: Laurie Goering
YAMPARAEZ, Bolivia -- Gliding silently overhead, black wingtips
spread like fingers against a blue Andean sky, a dozen condors drift
down a few thousand feet from the thermals they had been riding,
wanting a closer look.
Nearby, a dead burro lies waiting, but for the moment the birds are
more interested in Mario Tango, 60, a Quechua Indian whose farm
adjoins their red nesting cliffs at Condor Khakha, or Condor Canyon,
high in the Bolivian Andes.
Effortlessly they hang in the wind just over his head, craning their
white-ruffed necks and naked blue heads for a better look. Then they
climb again, huge black shadows sweeping the ground.
"Think they're waiting for us to die?" Tango wonders, grinning in
mock terror. The birds swoop down the hillside, toward the burro.
While California condors continue their slow comeback from the brink
of extinction, Andean condors, their larger cousins, are making a
more successful stand against the modern age.
South America's condors face most of the same problems as the birds
in California--loss of habitat, power lines, hunting and poisoning.
At least a few each year are killed in ancient traditional rituals
practiced in remote villages of the Andes.
But thanks to relatively low human populations and growing protection
campaigns, thousands of the huge scavengers still fly free in the
high Andes, gliding the thermals from Venezuela to the tip of
Patagonia.
For South America's condors, "it's not all gloom and doom," said
Michael Wallace, a condor reintroduction specialist with the San
Diego Zoo. "The Andes are so vast."
Andean condors are larger and fancier than their California
relatives. Adults are jet black with regal white neck ruffs and white
on the upper surface of their wings, which makes them appear to glint
in the sun. They weigh up to 33 pounds--California condors top out at
23 pounds--and their wingspread averages 10 feet, nearly 2 feet wider
than the California condors.
Admirers call them clever, curious and brilliantly adapted to their
life as the garbagemen of the Andes.
"They're every bit as smart as other birds like ravens and parrots,"
Wallace said. "They live off their wits. They can't just outfly and
grab something, like an eagle could. They have to use every little
trick they can to figure out if an area is ripe for something to
die."
Andean condors have been spotted swooping out of the mountains to the
Pacific coast at sea lion calving time, the better to dine on
stillborns and placentas. Others know when the mountain alpacas or
camel-like guanacos are ready to give birth.
From miles overhead they can see anything that looks out of place,
especially anything that looks like it might die, experts say.
"The old tale of a person crawling across the desert with birds
circling overhead, it's all true," Wallace said. "They really know
how to spot something in trouble."
Traditionally, Andean condors ranged the entire length of South
America's western mountains. Today the highest populations, of
perhaps 3,000 to 4,000, remain in Chile and Argentina, at the
continent's sparsely populated southern tip. Large numbers of the
birds also are believed to survive in Bolivia and Peru, though
studies are few.
In Venezuela, at the northern tip of its range, however, the condor
died out 40 years ago. In that country, and in neighboring Colombia,
where the birds are very rare, condors are being reintroduced.
Decades ago, California condor experts began importing Andean condors
as stand-ins for the desperately endangered U.S. birds in breeding
and reintroduction experiments. Biologists say the Andean birds were
key to creating policies and programs that have helped save the
California condor.
Today California condor populations have risen from just 27, when the
last wild condor was captured in 1987, to well over 100, and birds
are being reintroduced to the wild.
During the California condor rescue effort, stocks of Andean condors
gradually developed in California zoos. Today, in a poetic turnabout,
many of those birds and their offspring are being returned to South
America to restock populations in Venezuela and Colombia.
In the last decade, the Peregrine Fund, a U.S.-based non-profit
organization devoted to the protection of predatory and scavenging
birds like condors, has returned 50 birds to the mountains of
Colombia. All but seven have lived, and some have formed successful
mating pairs.
Ironically, Colombia's bitter war with leftist guerrillas, who have
seized about 40 percent of the country, has helped the condors.
"It's the campesinos who shoot the birds, and they don't want to live
where the guerrillas are," said Alan Lieberman, a condor expert with
the Peregrine Fund.
Most Colombians also have eagerly embraced the reintroduction program
for the condor, which is the national bird and appears on everything
from the leading brand of beer--Aguila, or Eagle, a misnomer--to the
Colombian flag.
"Every year when we release birds, it's front-page news, with updates
every day. I remember when one bird flew out of range (of tracking
sensors) they just about had him on milk cartons," Lieberman said.
Venezuela's reintroduction program hasn't been as eagerly greeted.
Peasants, angry that a condor surveillance team was effectively
preventing them from illegally farming within a national park,
declared war on the endangered birds in 1995 and shot five.
"The endangered species act is kind of an American thing," Lieberman
said. "Here there are laws, but they're little enforced."
Like their U.S. relatives, Andean condors face their most serious
threat from human encroachment.
"Anytime you have human development in the area, the condors usually
take a beating," Wallace said.
Some fly into power lines or guy wires for cellular telephone towers.
Farmers trying to poison pumas accidentally kill whole groups of
condors as well. Even improved veterinary care, which cuts down on
deaths of cattle and goats, can take a toll by reducing the condors'
food supply.
Bolivian farmers insist that condors occasionally kill newborn goats,
and some condor watchers report seeing the huge birds drive herds of
cattle toward cliffs. While the birds may "help animals along a bit
toward dying," Wallace says, he doubts the herding story.
He can vouch for the birds' unwillingness to attack. A few years ago,
while investigating a nest in Peru, he found himself unintentionally
face to face with an adult male condor in a mountainside cave.
"If carnivores see you turn your back, that's when they attack. I
turned and presented my posterior," he said. "I slowly moved out, not
giving him any eye contact, and as soon as I got 3 feet away he flew
from the nest."
Shootings of the endangered birds seem to be growing rarer. Gun-
control laws in some Andean nations are reducing the number of
weapons in the hands of farmers and other potential hunters, and, "I
think it's actually sinking in that it's just not a good thing to
shoot the condors," Lieberman said.
Estimating the number of Andean condors in South America is
difficult.
Experts are fairly sure, however, that the numbers are holding more
or less steady, particularly with the reintroduction programs. The
huge birds, they caution, were never destined to blacken the skies of
South America.
"They've never been all that common," Lieberman said. "There were
always flocks of hundreds, not thousands."