Word: condor
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Though birding is a hobby, watchers are quickly drawn toward environmental issues. DDT nearly wiped out the osprey and the peregrine falcon. On April 19, the last California condor was taken from the wild. "We have to convert interest in birds into backing for conservation," says Arnold Brown of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. "It's one thing to admire a loon and another to realize that it's our oldest bird, 70 million years old, and in trouble from acid rain...
...Adult Condor No. 9," as California scientists had designated the last known free-flying condor in the state, hovered over a goat carcass last week in the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, 40 miles southwest of Bakersfield. Sweeping down on its 9 1/2-ft. wingspan, it settled in for breakfast. But the seven-year-old male bird, which had eluded pursuers for seven months, had at last fallen into a trap. Captors hidden nearby set off small explosives that launched a "cannon net" over the condor, and A.C. 9 was grounded for what wildlife experts say is his own good...
...convince himself that his ideology is the only truth. The tragedy of Alejandro Mayta is that the give-and-take of public affairs is too perplexing for his blind faith. Like the narrator, he cannot escape the comic ironies that respect no certitudes. When free as an Andean condor, Mayta is a dedicated Communist. Imprisoned, he is a revolutionary whose zeal leads to reforming the convicts' commissary and a modest career in capitalism...
Audubon, along with Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club, is considering legal action to halt the condor roundup. The three groups point out that the birds have never bred in captivity and that the dozen hatched in zoos came from eggs taken from nests in the wild; capture of the last six wild condors, they fear, may mean no more eggs. Finally, the environmentalists say, without any condors in the wild, it will be harder to resist the pressure of developers who want to build in the birds' natural habitats. Should the day come when biologists attempt...
Favorite movie: Three Days of the Condor...