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Editorial Review Product Description
The California condor
has been described as a bird
"with one wing in the grave." Flying on wings nearly ten feet wide from tip to tip, these birds thrived on the carcasses of animals like woolly mammoths. Then, as humans began dramatically reshaping North America, the continent's largest flying land bird started disappearing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, extinction seemed inevitable. But small groups of passionate individuals refused to allow the condor to fade away, even as they fought over how and why the bird was to be saved. Scientists, farmers, developers, bird lovers, and government bureaucrats argued bitterly and often, in the process injuring one another and the species they were trying to save. In the late 1980s, the federal government made a wrenching decision -- the last remaining wild condors would be caught and taken to a pair of zoos, where they would be encouraged to breed with other captive condors. Livid critics called the plan a recipe for extinction. After the zoo-based populations soared, the condors were released in the mountains of south-central California, and then into the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, and Baja California. Today the giant birds are nowhere near extinct. The giant bird with "one wing in the grave" appears to be recovering, even as the wildlands it needs keep disappearing. But the story of this bird is more than the story ofa vulture with a giant wingspan -- it is also the story of a wild and giant state that has become crowded and small, and of the behind-the-scenes dramas that have shaped the environmental movement. As told by John Nielsen, an environmental journalist and a native Californian, this is a fascinating tale of survival. ... Read more Customer Reviews (9) 
A book about giant flying scavengers that didn't gross me out!
If you're squeamish, you may not be attracted to a book on a really large birds that eats dead animals carcasses.When the opening paragraph compares trapping these birds to waiting in a shallow grave, you may consider if you have the stomach for this material.But if you can read with an objective eye, you may be rewarded by this fascinating account of the project that prevented the extinction of the California condor.
Written in a journalist style for lay readers, this book is not a natural history primer.Enough science is included for the lay reader to understand what the biologists and wildlife managers are doing but readers are not overwhelmed with technical details.Individuals (people and birds) are featured to personalize the story.
I found particularly interesting how condors in re-established populations had been impacted by the human manipulation.Birds raised by people, even when people tried to raise them as much like condors as possible, did not act in the same ways the old "wild" condors did before we trapped them for captive breeding.It seems that while people managed to prevent their extinction, we caused condors to lose the cultural knowledge parents taught offspring about how to act like a "wild" condors.While we claim to have saved the species, we may not have saved all the qualities of the wild condors we hoped to perpetuate for the future.This raises interesting questions about animal behavior and learning, our relationship to wild species, and the true nature of "wildness."
Long may she soar
If you are looking to be enlightened about the natural history of the California condor, look elsewhere.
This book instead, focuses more on the human story of the condors decline and our own response in saving this bird from the brink of extintion. I would argue that you cannot separate the human story from the condor's because we are so deeply entwined.
Reading this account really brings out the bitter differences in the scientic community between the hands off approach and those who want to save the condor by contolling every aspect of their lives. I alway knew the condor was a very contensious issue among many and my own feeling are mixed.
What brought me around to the opion that this amazing relic of the past is worth saving was not this book but seeing freeflying condors soaring above the Pacific Coast in Big Sur. I highly recommend this to everyone!
The only reason I did not give this book five stars is that Nielsen has the habit of putting himself into the book, instead of letting the characters and personalities of the people shine. It's fine if you are a writer of John McPhee's caliber but it is less effective in Nielsen's writing.
I could hardly put it down
I picked up the 2006 edition of this book and enjoyed it thoroughly from cover to cover. I was a little put off at the start by how "the bird gets into your head". It sounded a little banal, and gave me concern that the book would be full of heavy-handed cliches, but the book immediately took off and kept soaring to the end. A great, engrossing read. It appears to be very thoroughly researched to boot. Just a few typos, though, which I expect were fixed in the 2007 ed.
A Near Death Experience
If cats have nine lives, then the California condor as a species must be their equal. These birds have stepped to the edge of the extinction cliff and ALMOST fallen to a crushing collapse. After reading their story, you have to wonder if the creator was playing a cruel joke on this ancient and giant bird.First, with the exception of the huge black body and their graceful soaring, they aren't what you would call "easy on the eyes."They have a number of disgusting habits, and to top it off, they settled on Southern California as home (i.e., this place is being consumed by development at an alarming rate).
Condors to the Brink and Back - covers this bird's life history all the way to the release of zoo raised birds into the wilds of California and Arizona.With each chapter that John Nielsen writes in their life history I felt like, "Okay, this is it.These birds aren't going to survive this one."In the end, the species (read: humans) which puts them against the ropes, is ultimately the same species which comes to their rescue.Nielsen introduces all the key players in what at times resembles a less-than-unified effort to save the mighty condor.
Nearing the end of the book, what becomes apparent is man's role as the crutch the fragile condor must lean against to survive.As more condors raised in captivity are released into the wild, their dependency on wildlife biologists and zoo care-takers can begin to crumble.Encouraging news about California condors breeding and fledging new birds in their natural habitat is happening with greater frequency and spreading over a wider range including Mexico.
Their longer term survival looks brighter and brighter.But some of the threats that put these birds on the brink of collapse are still present today in the form of lead pellets and bullets in downed game which the condors ingest and the ever shrinking range land which they inhabit.For the time being, we have the California condor back to grace our skies,and play an important role as one of nature's big body snatchers.
Everything Condor
This is a really interesting book.Nielsen writes very well, and with an evident passion arising from his boyhood experiences with condors in southern California.Nielsen tells the story of the condor, what little we know of its history before the nineteenth century, the slaughter of the birds and the stealing of its eggs, and finally the sometimes comical efforts to save this profound species from extinction.The book is equally appealing to readers who are simply seeking a good story, and to those who are involved in other kinds of environmental protection efforts.
One particular part of the story surprised me.Nielsen interviewed Sandy Wilbur, the government biologist charged with developing a plan to save the condor immediately after the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973.According to Nielsen, Wilbur became a Christian after reading a book by C.S. Lewis, and it was his Christian beliefs that influenced his desire to preserve the condor.Wilbur believed that the condor was special because it was created by God, even though the bird had long outlived its evolutionary significance and was not necessary for any current ecosystem.This is a different kind of motivation for saving biodiversity, and the story is a nice complement to the many other individuals who have struggled to save such a memorable bird.
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