California condor

Abstract:

There are a lot of problems facing with the California condor; they lost their habitat, were killed by the poisonous carcass, and so on. This paper talks about whether we need to save condors or not, how we can restrict the lead bullet, and what we can do to recover the habitat which condors have had. That’s all of it.

California condor, which feed on carrion, are “located in the wild only in isolated areas of reintroduction: California and Arizona in the United States, and Baja California, Mexico. Habitat is wooded mountains and scrublands” (Zoological Society of San Diego, 2008 para. 1). They are big birds roaring in the sky. Now, the number of this bird is becoming very small. Here is the problem facing with the California condor. The first one is the loss of their habitat. We all know that in these human’s long history, we have never stopped destroying the world’s environment; we make a lot of pollution and spoil the ozone layer that can protect the rays from going to the earth directly. Global warming and some other environment problems nowadays appear normally. In the same time, a lot of animals have lost their habitat; California condor is one of them. The second problem is the use of lead bullets. Lead bullets means poison bullets; people use them to hunt for animals. Even through we don’t hunt for condors now, as scavengers, they eat the carcass left by some hunters who just hunt animals for fun. And one dead carcass can cause a number of deaths of condors. The third problem is that the way we recover the condors is not right. We let the condor lose the ability to forage. They can only rely on human beings to live. So I will give my opinions on these problems.

These are the three things I want to argue about. First is recovering the loss of habitat. We can start this by finding a new place for them to live or just recover; second is stopping the use of lead bullets by passing some bills and changing the price of the bullets; third is improving the breeding program in order to improve the condors’ ability to forage. All of these solutions need not only government but us to participate in the project. Then, we can use the shortest time to complete the program. The following are the details for all these ways.

The first one is to recover the loss of habitat. This is a big program; habitat loss can not be solved in only a few days. So it requires the efforts of everyone. Condors live in the wooded mountains and scrubland. Reforestation is the first thing we should do; stop logging trees in these ranges and start planting trees. In my core class, I learned some ways to reforest; here are some of them: “fully fund the Rapid Assessment Program (RAP), which sends biologists to assess the biodiversity of ‘hot spots’; then, use debt-for-nature swaps and conservation easements to encourage countries to protect the forest or other valuable natural systems. Work with local people to protect forests; stop funding tree and crop plantations, ranches, roads and destructive types of tourism ; set aside large protected areas for indigenous tribal peoples”. All in a word, we should ask the government for help and find the people who live in these areas to work together. In this way, we can have improvement.

Reforestation is one part of the recovery program; some people say we can also find another area for condors to live. The place we need should be like this: there are enough carcasses for condor that means that besides the condor, there should be many other kinds of species. Then, condors always need cliffs, “the cliffs offer the Condor an invaluable benefit of searching for food in wide open, non-forested areas, making their hunt much more productive” (Habitat of the condor, n.d.). Also, condor nests in ledges and their nest are small; the place should not have too many natural enemies for them. All these requirements are needed for the new habitat.

Also, we individuals should do something. Every day, we use a lot of resources. These resources all come from nature. Some of them cannot be reused or dergraded. After we use them, they still exist in the earth; they cause a lot of pollution and damage the animals’ habitat. We should stop buying these resources, and use reusable or refillable plates, cups, etc. We also should find some other chemicals instead of CFCs. Build higher chimneys and stop burning fossil materials. We can’t stop using our cars, but we can use solar energy in our high tech products. If we can slow down global warming, we can stop animals from migration, and condors can still find carcasses to eat. That is what is possible.

The second one is the lead bullet. We can regard this problem as the most serious one. Even if we save a lot of condors at a time, one bullet can kill all of our hard work. The lead bullets are made of a metal, Pb; it is a very dangerous element in chemistry, and even humans can be poisoned by it. We buy them only because they are cheap. I find that not all the hunters are really hunting for food. If the hunter only hunts animals for fun, they don’t need to pay that much money to buy the bullets, and even the carcass is poisoned, they don’t eat them, so what is affected most are these condors.

“Despite a California law that provides subsides to hunters to buy more expensive non lead bullets, the state has yet to fund it” (Roosevelt, 2008. Para.).I have an idea about it, if our government subsides don’t make sense, how about using this money to produce more non lead bullets. Then we can raise the lead bullets’ price and lower the non-lead bullets’ price at the same time. In this way, more and more people will buy non-lead bullets and the market will change; more non -ead bullets are needed. Then, we can accelerate produce the non-lead bullets and slow down the lead bullets. It may not take a long time until one day, we can stop producing the lead bullets. So this requires our government to publish new bills. We can restrict the range of using the lead bullets. If the range is too small, the hunters will feel inconvenience, and then the lead bullets are useless. People won’t spend money on useless things.

As I know, we truly have passed some bills to limit the use of lead bullets; “last year California became the first state to pass a law prohibiting hunters from using lead ammunition within the condor’s 2,385-square-mile range”（Roosevelt, 2008）.But the range is still too large. The law limit hunters from using lead bullets in the condors’ range, but didn’t totally forbid them, so, it still does not work at all.

Third, we should change the way we feed them. We all know that we have some recover programs on condor, the number of the condor increased at one time. But they died in a short time. The loss of ability to forage shock us, we find that we just feed them but train them. So, the next step we should do is to change the way.

We should put the food in some secret place to let the condor find it, rather than give it to them directly. The way we feed them is very important; maybe we should study the special signal the lead carcass has. Then, we should try to let the condor get the ability to recognize the carcass; we can put the non-poisoned carcass together, and when they want to eat the poisoned one, we will stop them. If we keep doing this, they will have feelings that this carcass can not be eaten. They will try to figure out what is the difference between these two carcasses. Then, when they start to eat the other one, we don’t do anything to stop them. So, they will feel safe about it. If we keep doing this for a long time, like one year or more, they will pass this on memory in mind. Then, they will keep this to their next generation, then, all of them can distinguish the carcass by themselves. So, when we put them back into their habitat and leave them alone, they can choose what they can eat and what they can’t.

There are some people who said that the condor is not needed in the world; we have spent a lot of money on itm and the result is it doesn’t make too much sense; they think we should kill all the condors. “The first independent study in decades of the complex, multimillion-dollar effort to rescue the giant scavengers from extinction has raised a politically incorrect question: Has the condor recovery program been a waste of money?” (Roosevelt, 2008, para. ). It is funny to see this news; we did spend a lot of money on condors, and all the results prove that we can save them. The important thing is we need time to improve our saving program. “Despite Arizona’s effort, condors are still being poisoned there. Given the condors’ low reproductive rate, ‘a virtually 100% compliance rate’ would be necessary to maintain the species” (Margot Roosevelt, 2008). Yes, there is no doubt that the number is the truth, but it was caused by ourselves; if we don’t produce the lead bullets, condors will never eat the poisoned carcass ,and they won’t die for this. We can see condors circle the carcass and eat them before they die; don’t you think it is our fault?

Our ecosystem is a big family; we have no right to decide whether one of them has the meaning to live. Human being is indeed the most clever species in the world, but if we do too much harm to the environment, it will pay us back in the end. In the past few years, many kinds of species have died out in the world; we make a lot of pollution. Sometimes, we can notice that human are very selfish, we doing things without considering something else. If condor dies out, it is not the end, it is just a beginning; we will kill more and more animals in the future, and we will always find an excuse for the entire problem we find. In the end, and we are the last species in the world and will soon die out.

Don’t let that tragedy happen, we need different species to keep the natural balance. Condor’s death will cause not only one issue but more. We can’t imagine how bad the problems may become if we ignore the problem which we have now. So, encourage everyone to make a contribution to the saving program, to save the condor, not only for the bird, but for nature and ourselves.

References:

Are California condors worth saving? （2008,August 9）. Los Angele Times
Retrieved November
27, 2008 from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2008/08/are-california.html

Bird Keeper. (2008, September 23). Rebuild it and they will come
back.
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Galindo. (2008, October 1). Lead claims another condor. Retrieved November 27,
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http://cacondorconservation.org/content/blog/blogs/2008/lead-
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Roosevelt, M. (2008, August 9). Survival of freed condors doubted.
Angeles Time. Retrieved November 27, 2008 from
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Roosevelt, M. (2008, August 9). Recovery of condors in doubt; They rely
on humans for food free of lead bullets, which has damaged their
ability to forage, study says. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 27 , 2008
from: http://www.LexisNexis.com

Wikipedia. (n.d.). California condor. Retrieved November 27, 2008, from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Condor

Zoological Society of San Diego. (2008). Birds: California condor. Retrieved
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