Framed by snow-capped mountains and an ice-blue sky, a 10-kg (22-lb.) adolescent California condor named Chocuyens poked his head out of a man-made nest on a rocky promontory in Southern California's Los Padres National Forest last week. With that timid move, he became the first member of his endangered species to return from captivity to the wild. Minutes later, his nestmate Xewe and two young Andean condors sent along as companions emerged. The birds jumped up and down and flapped their immense wings in an apparent preflight dance while jubilant naturalists watching from distant cliffs poured champagne.
Xewe and Chocuyens, direct descendants of the last breeding pair captured in the wild in 1987, stayed cautiously on the sandstone cliffs all day. Unlike most birds, which take off easily with sheer muscle power, young condors must learn to ride the wind. As beneficiaries of a $25 million U.S. government program to save their species, Xewe and Chocuyens seemed to sense the political importance of flying right the first time.
The California condor is a prime example of what conservationists have labeled charismatic megafauna, a charmed circle of struggling species that are cute enough or distinctive enough to capture the public imagination. Among the others: the gray wolf, grizzly bear, bald eagle, desert tortoise and, of course, the northern spotted owl. Since the Endangered Species Act, which commits the government to protecting all life forms from extinction, became law in 1973, this select group of animals has received an inordinate share of funding.
But while the public relations value of such special treatment is clear, its biological value is not. "Of 676 native species on the endangered and threatened lists," says Faith Campbell of the Natural Resources Defense Council, "only around two dozen are receiving a significant amount of recovery effort." Waiting in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service classification pipeline are nearly 4,000 other dwindling species, most of them little known plants and tiny invertebrates. "They may not be sexy," admits Campbell, "but such organisms are what make ecosystems work."
Will they be saved? The Endangered Species Act is up for reauthorization this year, and a throng of interest groups is determined to weaken it. Not since 1977, when an 8-cm (3-in.) fish called the snail darter halted construction of Tennessee's Tellico Dam, has this critical piece of environmental legislation generated so much controversy.