Bringing Back the California Condor

Bringing Back the California Condor
Author: Rachel Stuckey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: California condor
ISBN: 9781725480735

"The California Condor is one of North America's largest birds. These mighty scavengers were nearly wiped out by habitat loss, poaching, and lead poisoning. In 1982, only 22 California Condors remained in the wild! In this engaging book, readers will learn about the captive breeding programs, public education, and other conservation efforts that have led to a small but increasing population of California Condors in the wild."--

Condors in Canyon Country

Condors in Canyon Country
Author: Sophie A. H. Osborn
Publisher:
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2007
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

Ten thousand years ago, the California condor's shadowraced across the rock faces of canyon walls throughout theSouthwest, but, over time, the majestic condor disappearedfrom this land--seemingly forever. Last seen in northernArizona in 1924, the California condor was on the brink ofextinction. In the early 1980s, scientists documented onlytwenty-two condors remaining in the wild, all in California.Thanks to a successful captive-breeding program, theirnumbers have increased dramatically, and dozens now flyfree over northern Arizona and southern Utah. Sophie A. H. Osborn's groundbreaking book, Condors inCanyon Country, tells the tragic but ultimately triumphantstory of the condors of the Grand Canyon region. A naturalstoryteller, Osborn has written an in-depth, highly personalnarrative that brings you along as the author and othercondor biologists struggle to ensure the survival of thespecies. The book's kaleidoscopic photographs of thesehuge birds flying free over the Southwest are nearly asbreathtaking as seeing California condors live. The onlybook of its kind, Condors in Canyon Country is a must-readfor anyone passionate about endangered species and whathumankind can do to save them.

Return of the Condor

Return of the Condor
Author: John Moir
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-11-21
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1493078755

“A heart-stopping saga of the rescue from the very brink of extinction of one of the grandest of all birds.”—Thomas Lovejoy, president of the Amazon Biodiversity Center. RETURN OF THE CONDOR is the riveting account of one of the most dramatic attempts to save a species from extinction in the history of modern conservation. Features a new Afterword by the author. With the condor’s population down to only twenty-two birds in the 1980s and their very survival in doubt, the condor recovery team flouted conventional wisdom and pursued a controversial strategy to pull the bird back from the brink of extinction. Thus began the ongoing, decades-long program to reestablish America’s largest bird in its ancient home in Western skies. Award-winning science writer John Moir takes readers into the backcountry to get to know the recovery program scientists as well as some of the individual condors. These are stories of peril, uncertainty, and controversy. Woven throughout these tales of heartbreak and triumph is the extraordinary dedication of the humans who have sometimes risked their lives for this charismatic, intelligent, and social bird. Despite the program’s remarkable successes, the condor’s narrative is still unfolding with a number of challenges remaining. This includes the dilemma of lead poisoning among free-flying condors that is a major obstacle to the bird’s recovery. The new Afterword presents a compelling examination of the progress and continuing adversity facing the condor recovery effort since the first edition of the book was published. Finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize from the Stanford University Libraries Honorable Mention from the National Association of Science Writers

Condor

Condor
Author: John Nielsen
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0061740640

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 of a 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.

California Condors in the Pacific Northwest

California Condors in the Pacific Northwest
Author: Jesse D'Elia
Publisher:
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2013
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780870717000

"The authors study the evolution and life history of the California Condor, its historical distribution, the reasons for its decline, and their hopes for its reintroduction in the Pacific Northwest"--

Bringing Back the California Condor

Bringing Back the California Condor
Author: Rachel Stuckey
Publisher: Animals Back from the Brink
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2020
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780778768111

The California Condor is one of North America�s largest birds. These mighty scavengers were nearly wiped out by habitat loss, poaching, and lead poisoning. In 1982, only 22 California Condors remained in the wild! In this engaging book, readers will learn about the captive breeding programs, public education, and other conservation efforts that have led to a small but increasing population of California Condors in the wild.

How to Clone a Mammoth

How to Clone a Mammoth
Author: Beth Shapiro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0691209561

An insider's view on bringing extinct species back to life Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? In How to Clone a Mammoth, Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist and pioneer in ancient DNA research, addresses this intriguing question by walking readers through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction. From deciding which species should be restored to anticipating how revived populations might be overseen in the wild, Shapiro vividly explores the extraordinary cutting-edge science that is being used to resurrect the past. Considering de-extinction's practical benefits and ethical challenges, Shapiro argues that the overarching goal should be the revitalization and stabilization of contemporary ecosystems. Looking at the very real and compelling science behind an idea once seen as science fiction, How to Clone a Mammoth demonstrates how de-extinction will redefine conservation's future.

Flight Ways

Flight Ways
Author: Thom van Dooren
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0231537441

A leading figure in the emerging field of extinction studies, Thom van Dooren puts philosophy into conversation with the natural sciences and his ethnographic encounters to vivify the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions. Unlike other meditations on the subject, Flight Ways incorporates the particularities of real animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, natural scientists, and general readers into the experience of living among and losing biodiversity. Each chapter of Flight Ways focuses on a different species or group of birds: North Pacific albatrosses, Indian vultures, an endangered colony of penguins in Australia, Hawaiian crows, and the iconic whooping cranes of North America. Written in eloquent and moving prose, the book takes stock of what is lost when a life form disappears from the world—the wide-ranging ramifications that ripple out to implicate a number of human and more-than-human others. Van Dooren intimately explores what life is like for those who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving their dead. He bolsters his studies with real-life accounts from scientists and local communities at the forefront of these developments. No longer abstract entities with Latin names, these species become fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life, sparking our sense of curiosity, concern, and accountability toward others in a rapidly changing world.

Nature's Ghosts

Nature's Ghosts
Author: Mark V. Barrow
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 511
Release: 2011-04-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0226038157

The rapid growth of the American environmental movement in recent decades obscures the fact that long before the first Earth Day and the passage of the Endangered Species Act, naturalists and concerned citizens recognized—and worried about—the problem of human-caused extinction. As Mark V. Barrow reveals in Nature’s Ghosts, the threat of species loss has haunted Americans since the early days of the republic. From Thomas Jefferson’s day—when the fossil remains of such fantastic lost animals as the mastodon and the woolly mammoth were first reconstructed—through the pioneering conservation efforts of early naturalists like John James Audubon and John Muir, Barrow shows how Americans came to understand that it was not only possible for entire species to die out, but that humans themselves could be responsible for their extinction. With the destruction of the passenger pigeon and the precipitous decline of the bison, professional scientists and wildlife enthusiasts alike began to understand that even very common species were not safe from the juggernaut of modern, industrial society. That realization spawned public education and legislative campaigns that laid the foundation for the modern environmental movement and the preservation of such iconic creatures as the bald eagle, the California condor, and the whooping crane. A sweeping, beautifully illustrated historical narrative that unites the fascinating stories of endangered animals and the dedicated individuals who have studied and struggled to protect them, Nature’s Ghosts offers an unprecedented view of what we’ve lost—and a stark reminder of the hard work of preservation still ahead.