El Condor Pasa

• Published in: Queen's quarterly 2006-12, Vol.113 (4), p.586
• Main Author: Morris, Nomi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal populations; Birds; California condor; Elementary education; Endangered & extinct species; Human beings; Human-environment interactions; Influence on nature; Markov models; Nielsen, John; Nonfiction; Ornithology; Protection and preservation; Teachers; Therapy; Wildlife conservation
• ISSN: 0033-6041

THE FIRST TIME I heard the word "condor" was in Mr Murray's class at Summit Heights Public School in suburban Toronto. It was 1971, and our free-thinking, pipe-smoking Grade 4 teacher was teaching us our first song on guitar, Simon and Garfunkel's El Condor Posa. "I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail," I strummed. "Yes I would. IfI only cou-ou-ould. I surely wou-ould. Hmm, hmm." I dug my fingertips onto Å-minor and G, two sad and simple chords. "I'd rather be a forest than a street... I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet." Then my nine-year-old voice rose confidently as I stretched my hand over the C chord. "Awaaay. I'd rather sail awaaay ..." It was a song of peace, and of harmony with nature. I imagined a dove-like bird, something between a sparrow and a swan. It was Richard Nixon who actually saved the California condor in 1973 when he signed an updated version of the Endangered Species Act, writes [John Nielsen]. Enter Sandy Wilbur, another interesting character in the condor wars. Wilbur is a born-again Christian biologist who was chosen to head up the condor recovery program. As both a scientist and a creationist, he was dubbed "God's condor man." It would be wrong to presume that a Christian believer might urge man to step out of the way of God's handiwork as the forces of nature progress. Instead, Wilbur believed that saving the condor - as Noah had done before him - was "doing the work of the Lord." As an advocate of the trapping and breeding program, he provoked the ire of "hands-off " environmental activists such as David Brower, who argued that the money and energy would be better spent curbing development than saving a dying species. In the late 1970s Brower wrote that it wouldn't be long before visitors to southern California were greeted by highway signs reading "Los Angeles - next 250 exits." Les Reid, a former Sierra Club director who lives in a remote area of central California, one day found eight condors had broken through a screen and were sitting on his bed. Nielsen describes them - and a group of maladjusted condors released in Arizona - as "acting like a gang of bored punks." It got worse. Several died when they flew into power lines or tried to roost on utility poles. Zookeepers responded with an "aversion therapy" program, administering electric shocks to captive condors whenever they rested on something looking like a power pole. Handlers were also required to "rough up" the birds - without hurting them - so they would not b