VISITORS AT THE BRINK

By Jim Burns

Particularly because our MAS chapter has such a long-standing and outstanding reputation for environmental activism, it is easy for us to become fixated on the negatives in the uphill battle to save the planet from ourselves.  We are Sisyphus.  The rock is daunting.

The lady on our cover was just one of the hordes of visitors at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon over the 4^th of July holiday.  As we maneuvered the parking lots on our first day, looking for condors or condor jams, we played the license plate game, missing only DE, HI and ND from the fifty states.  We missed the condors too, but at sundown I caught a rumor from a West Rim shuttle driver.  All the Peregrine Fund trucks were out at The Abyss, the first overlook west of Mohave Point.

The Grand Canyon shuttles run early this time of year to accommodate hikers hoping to beat the summer heat.  The next morning I was on the West Rim shuttle at 5:00 a.m.  Just myself, my tripod and lens, and three backpackers headed for Hermit's Rest trailhead.  At 5:15 the sun climbed over the horizon and flooded the awestriking vertical wall of The Abyss with golden light.  There was not another human being within five miles.  A quarter mile west and a quarter mile straight down along the ledges of the Toroweap, eleven California Condors were on that wall, waking, wingstretching, preening, looking from that distance like Turkey Vultures except for the large, easily readable wing and tail tags securing their radio transmitters.

I hurried along the rim trail seeking a vantage point close enough to the roost for decent camera looks, but by the time I had walked a mile without another sighting I realized the dropoff was too sheer to allow observation of the ledges from directly above.  I had walked 

right over the condors.  I finally lip reached a point where I could look back to the area I had first seen them.  They were gone!  Twenty-five pound birds with ten foot wingspans do not f away like the warblers and titmice foraging along the trail.  I turned back, crossed the top of a promontory, crested a small rise where the path again brought me within yards of the edge, and was brought to an incredulous halt in mid-stride.

Condors were boiling up out of the canyon all around me!  It was 7:15.  As the rock began reflecting the sun's heat, they had caught the early thermals, launching upon their daily activities of searching for food and assuaging their innate curiosity about the tiny upright creatures milling about the rim.  Some were still below me, circling up the wall.  Some were already above me, soaring out of sight around the promontory.  Two were drifting right toward me, rim level, too close to focus binoculars or lens.  I dropped to my knees, heard them pass within yards, spoke aloud to them, sat for moments unmoving, out of body, out of time, some lone pilgrim to some premodern planet.

The lady on our cover was hatched in the LA zoo in May, 1996.  Her father, Mandan, was the second condor ever hatched from captive bred parents, spring of 1989.  Her mother, Tama, was captured as an adult in 1985, one of the last nine condors left in the wild.  At sundown on our second day she was atop the Orphan Mine tower, between the Powell Memorial and Maricopa Point, with eleven of her kind, half of the wild condors gracing the wilderness of rock and canyon that is northern Coconino County.  There are now 160 California Condors in the world, the twenty-four in Arizona two more than

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PUBLIC LANDS GRAZING RESOLUTION
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3.         Public lands livestock grazing should be permitted at stocking rates, which are balanced with vegetation production, rangeland restoration, watershed and soils protection, wild ungulate forage needs, and other wildlife habitat values, including those where birds nest.  Capacity determinations should include domestic and wild ungulates in a distribution scheme that accounts for populations of wild ungulates and their associated forage needs.   Forage utilization standards that reflect this balance should be monitored regularly, including annual mid-point and end-of-season monitoring and trend monitoring over the life of an allotment management plan.  Term grazing permits should be modified immediately upon the determination, through aggressive monitoring, that permitted numbers exceed capacity and utilization standards.

4.         Economic subsidies to the livestock industry should be reformed to eliminate inappropriate use of public lands and resources

.5.         Livestock grazing fees on public lands should be determined by market mechanisms and should cover the cost of 

6.         Public land agencies must actively seek the widest possible citizen participation in all decisions regarding livestock grazing on public lands. To that end management agencies must make monitoring, analysis, planning and decision documents, including drafts, freely available by Internet access to the maximum extent feasible.

7.         Livestock grazing on public lands must be administered under comprehensive plans that are designed at the ecosystem scale with primary consideration given to ecosystem integrity.

8.         The National Wildlife Refuge System, the National Park System and certain National Monuments are not multiple use lands, but were established to protect specific historic and natural resources and values.  Livestock grazing should be prohibited on such public lands unless there is solid scientific documentation that livestock grazing is beneficial or at least not detrimental to the legislated purpose of the Refuge, Park or Monument.

9.         Predator control on public lands that attempts to reduce livestock depredation should utilize scientific based techniques and livestock management methods that reduce livestock vulnerability to predation. Predator control on public lands must integrate long-term predator population viability and management goals.

BIG SIT! 2000 WRAP UP REPORT FINALLY ARRIVES

By Herb Fibel

For the second consecutive year Arizona had two Big Sit! circles-The Maricopa Audubon "Asterisks" at the Granite Reef Recreation Area, and Matt Brown's "Squatters" at Sonoita Creek, near Patagonia, in southern Arizona.  The two teams recorded a total of 84 species, down from 1999's total of 97.  Nevertheless, we ranked 5th in the continental U.S. for total number of species seen after California, which had 6 circles and 172 species, Connecticut, which had 14 circles and 139 species, Michigan, which had 4 circles and 105 species, and Texas, which had 3 circles and 91 species.

The annual October event is now international in scope (pardon the expression) with circles in England and in The Netherlands.  The circle with the highest count for the second straight year was Jim Royer's Elfin Forest Circle in Los Osos, San Luis Obispo County, California with 122 species. (I'm going to try to obtain specific directions to this location, because anyplace where that many species can be seen while sitting in one place must be a really hot birding spot.)

There were 66 circles altogether, and some 266 individual sitters.  Twenty-two new species were added to the 

Maricopa Audubon members will be participating in our 6th annual Big Sit! at our Granite Reef Recreation Area site this coming October 14^th, and again we'll be raising money for Maricopa Audubon.  We're sorry, but the six regulars who person the Circle pretty well fill up the allocated space, what with our picnic table, barbecue grill, lounge chairs, traditional baclava and champagne coolers, but we welcome your visit and encouragement.  We ordinarily record between 45 and 50 species.  If you would like to make a per species seen pledge this year, call Herb Fibel at (480) 966-5246.  Contributors (we'll bill you after the event) of $ 1.00 or more per species, will have their name or their business name, whichever they prefer, listed in an upcoming issue of the Wren-dition.  If you would like to establish a Big Sit!  Circle of your own, please let me know and I'll tell you how you can get started.  The underlying purpose is to enjoy looking at birds while relaxing with friends.  It's really a lot of fun.

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VISITORS AT THE BRINK
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If you consider yourself an environmentalist and you've grown weary pushing the rock, if you're tired of cows grazing your national forests, if you can't relate to blind salamanders or tiny flycatchers, go to the Canyon.  Condors, even with their reputation as nature's undertakers and some less than endearing traits such as urohidrosis (you don't even want to know), are a part of the "charismatic megafauna"--wolves, bears, whales--animals at the top of the food chain whose size and personality allow us to identify with them and truly understand that a world without them would be a lesser place.

In the autumn of 1979, already well into the autumn of their existence, I went on a MAS field trip to Mt Pinos in southern California to see the condors.  We saw a huge bird soaring the mountaintops many miles away.  It might have been a condor.  It might have been a Golden Eagle.  It might have been a mirage of wishful thinking.  Bob Bradley hiked for an hour in the direction it had flown, but returned with no news.  I knew at that moment I would probably never see a California Condor in the wild.

Shortly after sundown, the lady on our cover flew from the mine tower down toward Maricopa Point.  After my morning experience I had decided to concentrate on flight shots, left behind my heavy fixed

I set down my pack, circled back, walked toward the edge.  At five steps from eternity my knees started to go.  I stopped, got down on my belly, and scrunched forward, pushing Canon's new technology in front of me.  She was there, totally in shadow twenty yards away, didn't see me or didn't care.  I was one foot from the brink.  One foot from her world.  Without her wings.  My light meter told me I would have to hold this shot for 1/30^th of a second.  I knew I had never before gotten a sharp photo hand held at that speed at that magnification.  I also knew I would probably never again be this close to a California Condor in the wild.

As you can see, Canon's new technology is wonderful.  So are the technical advances which have allowed us this occasional environmental success story.  Those same advances which have fueled the growth which has made those successes a necessity.  The ironies and analogies are fascinating if not terrifying.  Proponents of biological diversity plead for saving the DNA that could save our lives.  I have seen the lady on the cover in her world.  It has renewed my soul.