Posted on 10/20/2015 4:08:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Big Sur >> She might be a princess, but she’s about to do some heavy lifting.
California condor No. 799, dubbed Princess, is expected any day now to make her first flight from her nest atop a redwood tree in the Big Sur wilderness, said Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society.
“There’s been five chicks raised in wild nests just this year,” Sorenson said. “That’s quite an accomplishment.”
One of this year’s chicks was raised by two female condors after the suspected mate of one of them died after nesting began. Ventana Wildlife Society monitored females 317 and 171 as they raised the chick in an extremely remote nest cave in the Ventana Wilderness.
The Ventana Wildlife Society has worked with state agencies and other nonprofit groups since 1997 to restore a condor population on the brink of extinction. In 1987, the last wild California condor was taken into captivity to join the 26 remaining condors in an attempt to bolster the population through a captive breeding program.
Today, the giant birds, with wingspans up to 10 feet, are recovering in the wild. The Big Sur coast is one of the historic habitats for condors, which now number more than 200 statewide and roughly 70 along the Central Coast.
But Princess is going to be fighting an uphill battle to survive.
That she was even hatched was a minor miracle. Even though the pesticide DDT was banned 43 years ago by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it still lingers along the California coast in quantities that research suggests is causing thinning of egg shells. The damage brought populations of not only condors but also brown pelicans and peregrine falcons to dangerously low numbers. The shells that have been tested indicate they are now 25 percent thinner than before the release of DDT.
But Sorenson said there are clear signals the problem is getting better. Five years ago, the average shell density was 34 percent thinner than normal.
Condors feed on large, dead animals, and food, such as still-born calves, are left for them at key points in their Central Coast range by the Ventana Wildlife Society and Pinnacles National Park. But as condors are re-introduced to the wild, they are feeding on carcasses, such as dead sea lions, that maintain high levels of a DDT byproduct in their fatty tissue.
I hope they can help save these birds.
I’d reckon wind farms are far more dangerous than DDT. Since the settled science turned out to be false.
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/05/22/we-are-the-idiots-n1601340#!
http://westernfarmpress.com/management/why-rachel-carson-was-wrong
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
Good point!
Dead, fat sea lions filled with DDT.
Those damn sea lions were eating dead insects in the ocean and the insects were filled with DDT.
Stupid condors feasting on the bloated bodies of fat, DDT filled sea lions.
The horror.....the horror.....
Wind farms and gigantic solar arrays are the left’s altars. The hell with the birds.
It was global warming.
Global warming created DDT that the poor, fat sea lions slurped up like macaroni salad at a family picnic.
Families of fat sea lions slurping up DDT and then competing in the gunny sack race just before they die at their family reunion and then get gobbled up by stupid condors who lay wimpy eggs so that some pencil-necked geek in California can climb up to the condor nest with his laser egg shell thickness measuring machine and fall out on his head.
If there was any justice in this world, the dead, fat, bloated, DDT filled sea lions would be eaten by a killer whale who would then beach himself on some beach in California so that Governor Jerry Brown would rush to the scene to help the killer whale who would swallow Jerry Brown and that moron lived through it so that he would be smelling dead, fat, bloated, DDT filled sea lion for at least a week until the killer whale passed him out thereby showing the Justice that Jerry Brown ended up truly being a piece of whale shirt.
This link of yours doesn’t explain why egg shells of birds of prey thinned... in fact it doesn’t even explain why Rachel Carson was wrong, which is disappointing since the title implied it would:
http://westernfarmpress.com/management/why-rachel-carson-was-wrong
The problem today is that we allow money and politics to usurp facts and reality. The media and lobbyists all have an agenda backed up by their big money cousins. They would have turned Jesus Christ into a pariah through the use of propaganda if his destruction would have given them power and made them money.
Facts today are what the consolidated corporate media and lobbyists use to twist politicians on both sides of the aisle to agree with their beliefs. I don’t trust anyone and I’m cynical of all..
Now this one you posted is a much better article than the other:
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
But unfortunately it also does not address the eggshell thinning issue. We all know Rachel Carson was a nut who caused untold harm with her paranoia about DDT actually killing things and total failure to acknowledge that for many species it was a boon not a bust. But ...I’m more interested in the cause of eggshell thinning because I haven’t heard any other theories about it.
And the first link , that of Walter Williams, while it does sort of vaguely address DDT in raptors, doesn’t actually refute the effect of DDT on raptor egg shells, it merely does as the other articles do, go after Rachel Carson for her hyperbole and the damage that the total ban on the pesticide has done.
Near as I can tell the theory [which is not Rachel Carson’s theory] that DDT causes thinning of raptor eggshells still stands.
Banning DDT had caused millions of human deaths, especially by malaria. What exactly is this eggshell thinning theory you trust so much, and where is a link to it?
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