Word: wildness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Cather's 1913 novel about the Nebraska frontier, must have seemed an ideal Hallmark project. It is certainly ideal for Jessica Lange, one of those over-40 movie actresses who are increasingly turning to TV for "mature" roles. As Alexandra Bergson, the Swedish farmer's daughter who tames the "wild land," she has a steely grace. But what was grand and moving in the novel comes out small and ordinary. Maybe it's because screenwriter Robert W. Lenski and director Glenn Jordan treat every event in Alexandra's life (a family quarrel, a sudden death) as if it were...
...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...
Chicks raised in captivity have prospered at the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos, but returning to the wild is another matter. At least 30 of the 49 black-footed ferrets released in a Wyoming wilderness last fall have died. In Texas, reintroduced northern aplomado falcons were killed off by great horned owls that had moved into the falcons' old territory...
...adolescent California condor named Chocuyens poked his head out of a man-made nest on a rocky promontory in Southern California's Los Padres National Forest last week. With that timid move, he became the first member of his endangered species to return from captivity to the wild. Minutes later, his nestmate Xewe and two young Andean condors sent along as companions emerged. The birds jumped up and down and flapped their immense wings in an apparent preflight dance while jubilant naturalists watching from distant cliffs poured champagne...
Xewe and Chocuyens, direct descendants of the last breeding pair captured in the wild in 1987, stayed cautiously on the sandstone cliffs all day. Unlike most birds, which take off easily with sheer muscle power, young condors must learn to ride the wind. As beneficiaries of a $25 million U.S. government program to save their species, Xewe and Chocuyens seemed to sense the political importance of flying right the first time...