Word: condor
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...majestic wings once cast large shadows all over North America. The bird was a survivor. When saber-toothed cats and other big animals died off about 10,000 years ago, the California condor retreated to the carrion-rich Pacific coast and survived. A Spanish priest recorded seeing one in 1602; Lewis and Clark spotted another...
...20th century plague of hunting and lead poisoning brought Gymnogyps californianus to near extinction. Biologists trapped the last wild California condor in 1987, and 27 birds remained as genetic "founders" for a breeding program that has produced 25 additional birds, including the two freed last week...
...Since a condor's wings are too large for much flapping, it soars skyward by jumping from its mountaintop nest into an updraft. On the ground, the birds need a spiraling thermal air current to take off. Says the Los Angeles Zoo's Michael Wallace: "I've seen Andean condors walk half a mile for a launch point...
...California the lives of the freed condors will be "managed." Stillborn calves left on mountains might keep the birds from flying to flatland sources of toxic food, and moving the carrion around will force natural foraging behavior. Biologists assume that intensive care is temporary. "Right now, we are this species' surrogate parents," says Robert Measta, head of U.S. Fish and Wildlife condor operations. "In the old days, adult condors did this job." With luck, someday they will again...
Defenders of the project predict there will be solid scientific findings and benefits, but even if there are not, so what? Inventor Paul MacCready, who has won both public praise and scientific acclaim for designing the human-powered flying machines known as the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross, contends that the true measure of a project's value is not whether it produces hard data but whether it provokes the human mind. "Who can say Lindbergh's flight was scientifically important?" he asks. "There was no new land discovered, and if you asked at the time, people might have said...