Latest / NaturallyScott / E75 Naturally Scott Adventures – California Condors: Giants of the Grand Canyon 🦅🏜️

Transcript

E75 Naturally Scott Adventures – California Condors: Giants of the Grand Canyon 🦅🏜️ · NaturallyScott

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Naturally Scott.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Scott Harris, and this is my podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's not really my podcast.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm the face of it, but the podcast doesn't happen without my producers, Justin Harris and Frank Sierra, who happen to also be my son and my best friend.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen without the guests, which are great.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen without nature and wilderness and the wild, which is fantastic.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: But mostly it doesn't happen without you, without the viewers, without the people that watch it.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so for that, I am grateful and I am excited.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have two types of podcasts.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We do one that is guest-based, runs a half hour, 40 minutes.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: We interview a guest, we talk to them about what it is that they're writing or what they're seeing in the field and their experiences.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about telling stories and bringing you guys out into wherever they are, chasing grizzly bears in Alaska or sperm whales off the coast of California, whatever it might be.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's thrilling.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: The other shows that we do are called Naturally Scott Adventures, and those are based on adventures that I go on.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very fortunate between this show and my books to be able to travel quite a bit.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I take that as a gift, and I certainly don't take it for granted.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I enjoy sharing it with you, the audience, as I enjoy sharing it with my family and friends.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're doing today.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're focusing on a bird, and we're focusing on a magnificent bird.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're focusing on the California condor.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't get much cooler than that.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So our journey's going to start with the Colorado River.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the Colorado River flows down into Lake Powell and goes through the Glen Canyon Dam, through Glen Canyon, down by Lee's Ferry.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't been, Lee's Ferry is a cool place.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's where a lot of the Colorado River rafting trips start.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I did a couple-of-week trip a few years back, and that's where that one started.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just beyond Lees Ferry, about five miles downriver, you're going to hit something called the Navajo Bridge.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to be going through Marble Canyon, which is the beginning of and a part of the Grand Canyon, but it's normally referred to by its more micro name, Marble Canyon.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Arizona.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, after it goes under that bridge and heads on down, it goes almost 300 more miles through what most of us think as the Grand Canyon.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the Marble Canyon itself is spectacular.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is just glorious.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's some red cliffs, the vermilion cliffs, I guess they're vermilion, not red.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And our story today takes place on something called the Navajo Bridge, because we're in Navajo tribal land.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: The bridge opened in January of 1929.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, there was no bridge to get across the Colorado River in any easy distance.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: You could take the ferry at Lees Ferry and go across, and that was the only ferry point.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as a matter of fact, at some point during the building of the bridge in the late 1920s, there was damage at the ferry, and so it wasn't working.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it was an 800-mile detour to go around, if you can imagine, to get from one side to the other.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this bridge was hugely important.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, it opened in 1929.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: When it opened, it was the highest steel arch bridge in the world.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: 467 feet above the water, 834 feet into end.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly enough, the bridge opened during Prohibition.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was christened, uh christened with a bottle of ginger ale, not a bottle of champagne, as is our normal thing.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but nobody wanted to acknowledge that there was still alcohol around.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when the bridge was built, and it was a spectacular um engineering feat when it was built, but nonetheless, it was only 18 feet wide, um, which for modern-day travel uh is not nearly wide enough.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so in 1929 it worked fine.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: As we got into the 60s and 70s, it did not.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So a new bridge was built and opened in 1975.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And while I don't have uh the records, um it is uh quite possible that it was open with the bottle of champagne and not uh 1995, by the way, not 1975.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so they kept the original bridge, which became a footbridge and is there today.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: What we know it as better is a condor lookout.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is a magnificent place to see condors.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the best in the world to see them.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are some arguments of other spots, and we'll talk about those later on, but nonetheless, uh that is the place to go for condors for reasons we'll describe.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've never seen a condor in the wild, they are amazing animals.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: They are huge and they are gigantic.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell this story sometimes because I think it's an appropriate um way of describing condors, and especially for people my age, I'm 70, um, they will understand this.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: In 1977, Star Wars was released, and the opening scene had a title crawl, and it had Princess Leia's ship going across.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, the special effects were remarkable.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: The ship looked huge and massive.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then when it went off-screen, it was followed by an Imperial class destroyer, one of the bad guys, and um was multiple times the size and imposing and sound and everything.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it stuck with me all those years.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, years later, I was up at Pinnacles National Park, uh another hot spot for condors, which we'll discuss.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I hiked up to the top of a mountain, and I'm looking across at another mountain where I'm hoping as the thermals heat up, uh, we'll see the condors.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And slowly the turkey vultures started coming up, a kettle of turkey vultures.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know turkey vultures, they're cool looking.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: The redheads, silver under the wings, six-foot wingspan.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're good-sized birds.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there were maybe 20 of them uh that were kettling and circling and, you know, doing their morning stretches and catching the thermals before they started their day.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, coming up from beneath them and then through them was a California condor, nine and a half foot wingspan, massive freaking bird.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it just reminded me where I thought the Princess Leia ship was impressive, i.e., the turkey vultures.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was when the Imperial Cruiser came through, i.e.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: the condor, uh, that it really got impressive.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you can still see that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I saw that again last year.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are two types of condors, by the way, the California condor, which is ours here in the United States, and then there's the Andean condor down in South America, uh running the spine of South America, if you will, through multiple countries.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to give you an idea on the size, California condors uh weigh up to 25 pounds.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: They get to almost four feet tall, and they've got nearly a 10-foot wingspan.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you're t forgive me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you're talking about a big bird.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is a large black bird.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they can live a long time, they can live over 60 years, and there's just some amazing things about these birds.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: They can travel up to 150, even 200 miles in a day.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: They can glide for hours when they catch the thermals and they're going, they can go a long time between even flapping their wings.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they cover a lot of distance, which is one of the dangers for them, and we'll get into that when we get into the dangers facing condors.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: But imagine a bird that routinely is going between 100 and 200 miles a day as it's looking for food.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they live a long time, and like most long-lived birds, um, they don't breed a lot of young.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: You get songbirds, they'll lay six, eight, even ten eggs, because one, 90% of them don't make it through the first year.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, they're they're dying quickly.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: They don't live a long time.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: A five-year-old songbird is an old songbird.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: 60-year-old condor is an old condor.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens is condors generally lay one egg at a time, a single egg, which is what makes them so tremendously, tremendously valuable and important.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: When those babies are born, if they're born healthy, they spend roughly a year with their parents as their parents teach them how to become condors.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is an acquired knowledge, and the parents need to work them through that to show them the best place to go, to look for carry and um and how to survive, how to build a nest on a cliff, how to protect your children, how to raise your children when the time comes.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a lot of work and it takes a year.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, condors have this really bright, colorful head.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a pinkish, orange, reddish, brownish head.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh but they don't even get that color.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get those colors until they reach breeding age, which is about six to eight years.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so a little bit like bald eagles, who are born with no white on their head, no white on their tails, and they don't really start getting it till third, even fourth year, and then it's fully comes in by about the fifth year.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: With the condors, it's a bit longer, it's six to eight years.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: One of the fascinating things about that is those colors become more intense.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Once they have the colors on their head, and they're easy to see.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're huge heads, and and we'll put a picture up.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can see they're a massive head with a lot of color.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: But when they get more intense, they the colors become more intense when the birds get more excited or when they're breeding, maybe both, but those colors intensify, they begin to glow a little bit like, again, I'm going back to my youth.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you can imagine, it's kind of a condor mood ring, if you will.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's kind of worth watching from that point of view.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Every wild condor that you see has large numbered tags that are stapled to its wings, they're wing tags.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, those tags vary by state.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's different number and letter combinations, um, but they're visible from a long way away, and that's on purpose.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the people whose job it is to monitor these car these condors and to make sure they're healthy and to keep track of them, um, have a chance to identify them from a reasonable distance away if they're on a cliff or a reasonable height if they're soaring.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're able to keep track.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And to the best of the ability of the people that work with them, every single condor is tagged so that we can follow them.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's a pretty important thing.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that's cool, by the way, uh, if you do see a condor and you do get the number, if you go to condorspotter.com, you can look up the number of that condor and find out where and when it was born, who its parents were, if it has its own children or mate, and all of those things.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you can really you can feel like you're involved in their life.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's a pretty exciting thing.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where does their life take place?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh California, Arizona, and Utah are currently the most common places to find them in the United States.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Baja California also has its share.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they're beginning to spend, they're beginning to be spotted in New Mexico, Oregon, even Wyoming.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they're spreading out a little bit.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at the end of uh 2025, there were 607 California condors alive in the world.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: 392 of those were wild.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: The other 200 plus are in captivity.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we're gonna talk about uh some of the problems with wild condors and things that happen to them and um and what some of the solutions are.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But before that, let's talk actually about the condors themselves.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: You arrive at the bridge.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most of my shows, I'm a as you guys know, I'm a huge fan of dawn or even pre-dawn.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I like getting there early.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I like being alone, I like seeing what's gonna happen and watch the morning unfold.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: With condors, you don't really need to do that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: These are not early rising birds.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go to the Navajo Bridge, which is in Arizona, that is where the condors hang out.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is where they start and end their day, is in and around the Navajo Bridge.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're on the girders underneath the bridge.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can look straight down at them.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're on the cliffs, uh, right all around the bridge.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's where they congregate.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the numbers vary.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've talked to different people who study them that have seen maybe 20 or 25 in a day.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I saw 17 uh the last time I was there was the biggest day of the three or four days.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you're going to be able to see condors if you go to the Navajo Bridge.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can walk on the bridge.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only thing you can do, is walk on the bridge.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you can look down and you can see condors in the girders, you can look across at the cliffs.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as the sun starts to come up, because they need that heat, they need to get things circulating and moving.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: As the sun starts to come up and it gets to be eight, nine in the morning, and the world's heating up, the condors wake up and they stretch and they walk a little.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: They go say hello to each other in small little groups.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, many of them are single, many of them are in groups.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: They just kind of hang out, the groups shift and change.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: As it starts to get even warmer, they open up their wings, they spread their wings, they love the sun, they're just soaking that sun up.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very cool to see these nine and ten-foot wingspans that are out there.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And again, each of these is a different step in their morning process.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is their equivalent of getting a cup of coffee and reading a paper and having a couple of eggs.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're getting their day fired up.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're not in a big hurry.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're not really predated on the cliffs.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Adult condors are not at great risk.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they're relaxed, just enjoying their day.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're certainly habituated to humans.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: They see us there every day.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they're not concerned.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the few days I was there, I didn't see anybody doing something stupid like throwing rocks or anything.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the people out there were enthusiasts.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're driving a long way to get there, so you gotta be pretty excited.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh the biggest thing we're doing is is taking pictures.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you get to watch them for a couple hours doing this, and then one of the contours will kind of drop down off the cliff or off the girders.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: They don't go far, they just glide to another space, maybe 50 or 100 feet away.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're staying within sight, and they move and they go to a little ledge on a cliff and they check things out, and maybe they sun some more, and you're watching to see which of the adults looking at the colored heads and which of the juveniles and who's hanging out together, um, and and uh all those different things.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're maybe making some notes, bring a little notepad of the numbers, see who flies out first and and who comes back under the bridge.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and so now they'll go back and forth a little bit, just kind of gliding, easing into their day.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're not uh they're not gone yet, but they are enjoying themselves and getting ready to take on the day.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then the first couple take to the sky.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: The sun is up hot enough, the thermals are out there, the updrafts are working, and so they start to take to the sky.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And once they do, generally they all follow, not in a mad rush, not like you're flushing them, but it's kind of like, eh, you know what, if Julie and Bill are going, I think I'll go too.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they take to the sky and they take those thermals and they go up, and they'll kettle around maybe a couple of minutes, maybe a half hour, maybe an hour.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's kind of fluid, and and they're drifting around, and you know, there's other stuff going on.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's ravens and and some different birds, but mostly this is 99.9% about the condors.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly get a signal that they understand, and maybe we don't, they take off.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And within just a couple of minutes, the sky is clear.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of ravens are left, which by now look tiny, tiny, tiny after you've been staring at condors for a couple hours.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the condors take off.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And where are they going?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to look for carrion.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they eat.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they don't hunt, they search, they forage.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're looking for things that are dead and have been dead maybe 24 hours and not much more than maybe 72 hours.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: The size range is massive.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: They will eat anything from squirrels on up to some of our California condors in California will eat a beached whale.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you'll see condors settling in on a beached whale.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's dead and it's meat, condors are there.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're a great, great cleanup crew.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so when they're gone, they're gone for the day.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, unless somebody's sick or injured, uh, they are gone for the day.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so now you've got the day, you can do whatever.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can go explore, you can go see something else in the area.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's plenty of different uh uh things that you can do during the day.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you come back in the afternoon and they start to come back.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: But they don't come back as a big group.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: They come back individually.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You'll just see one come soaring down the canyon and come up and maybe come under the bridge into the girders, and you're now hanging over the bridge looking to see which one it is and what number it is, and suddenly it'll soar down and and alight onto a ledge and and look for that right spot.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they're looking for where they're gonna sleep tonight, where's gonna be their roost tonight?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they're all returning.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a pretty neat thing to see.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they might start on one girder.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen them walk the entire length of the bridge and pick a different girder.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen them go from girder to cliff, from cliff to girder.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking for just the right spot.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Remind me a bit of a dog that goes around in circles until it finally drops.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really know what it was looking for or what exactly it said that where the dog was excited, but nonetheless, there you go.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: But to see these giants come soaring in, and again, I gotta say it, man, nine to ten foot wingspans, to see them coming back in the afternoon, early evening, those wings just out, they're just soaring down this canyon, and then they come and they land and and begin their night, begin their process.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is just an amazing thing.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these are not vocal animals.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they don't sing, they don't call out, they can make tiny little grunt sounds, um, but they basically are silent.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: They are different than almost every other bird, and that alone is eerie.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got this giant black silent flyer.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's it's pretty cool to see.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a little bit of history on this bird because it's important.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: We nearly lost them, came very, very close.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: In 1987, the last wild condor was captured.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that was a very controversial decision.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people didn't think it was the right idea to pull all of the condors out of the wild, but we were down to about 20 of them, and they were dying rapidly.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, DDT was the biggest problem.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: It had gotten into their systems, and um it affected the eggs.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so when the eggs were laid, the shells were too thin.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Mom went to sit on them to incubate and crush the eggs, so we weren't getting new condors.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so we were down to about 20.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the decision was made, again, quite controversial.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: The decision was made to capture them, uh, split them up between a couple of zoos, breed them, and try to reintroduce them in the wild once we had enough numbers where we thought it would be viable.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this actually worked.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this process worked.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to reintroduce them to the wild, which was spectacular.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're looking at, you know, 35 years later, um, there are a little over 600 condors um in the in the wild, which is spectacular.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or I'm sorry, 600 condors total, two-thirds in the wild, one-third in captivity.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they're doing well with a single exception.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that exception is really important, and that is lead bullets.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh lead bullets are wiping out the condors.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um so lead bullets are lead is about the only thing that a condor gastric system, the condor stomach, can't overcome.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh diseases and everything else that that that it that it might intake from the animals that it's eating, um, it's able to just run those through the system and be fine, but not lead.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lead poisoning is killing condors, as it kills all life.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's coming from animals that are hunted, shot, and then are not taken.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're either just wounded and they go off and die, or they're just shot and left to die for sport, whatever it might be.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the lead bullets are a tremendous issue.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so these condors are constantly having uh to be recaptured, brought back to health if possible, and then re-released in the wild.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's brutal on the condors.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's very difficult on the people managing the condors, and they don't all survive.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is we can set out, you know, um, if this makes sense, healthy cow carcasses.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Carcasses we know don't have lead in them, so the condors can eat, but they're not, they don't live in a small area, or they live in a small area, but they don't forage in a small area.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're traveling 150, 200 miles in a day.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can't control everything that they can find.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: We can't control a deer that was shot with lead bullets 125 miles away.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the condors will find it if something dies.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to find it and they're going to eat it.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so this right now is the biggest danger facing condors.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's always the occasional idiot that shoots them.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's just human nature.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: We that we have those people.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we have got to.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: California has outlawed lead bullets.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Other states are trying, but people have years worth of ammunition.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can't convince them to stop using it, we will continue to have this problem.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess the real question, the true question is can condors outlast lead bullets?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can we keep them alive long enough that lead bullets are eventually worked out of the system?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we know they will be.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: We know eventually they'll be gone.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're not making them, they're not selling them in California, you know, but nonetheless that's the battle.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you want to see these animals, if you want to see these birds, and I've I would think that you would, um, I think Navajo Bridge is the place to go.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking down on top of them.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a given that you'll see them.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, 19 days out of 20 or 99 out of 100, you're gonna see condors if you go to the Navajo Bridge.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a magnificent thing.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: But there are other places and other places that are beautiful.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned Pinnacles National Park in California.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen them there a handful of times.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is truly amazing.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get anywhere near as close as you do at Navajo Bridge.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the amazing things.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're looking down at a bird that's only maybe 20 feet below you.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're looking at a bird pretty close.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: At Pinnacles, uh, that's where I describe the Star Wars day.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're looking at the birds at a far distance, but you're also looking at it from a national park.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking at it from a mountain or the top of a mountain.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty cool to see.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you continue down the Colorado to the south rim of Grand Canyon, there are California condors there as well.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't really have much that's prettier than the Grand Canyon.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's not a given.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it is chance.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so when you do see them, it is beautiful and magnificent and lifetime memorable.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But you might go and you might not see them.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where again, if you come to Navajo Bridge, you're gonna see them.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And another place I want to mention is Zion National Park in Utah, uh, which is really cool.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you get these, you know, the beautiful cliffs.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have not seen this, but I have friends that have called me from their from this location to describe it, where they're up on a cliff, they've hiked high, and the condors are going through the canyon below them, and so they're watching that.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I that is something I do want to see, and I'm looking forward to seeing it.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you can get out there and see one of these 400 birds um, really at any of these places in Arizona, in Utah and California, or down in Baja, um, you're gonna want to do that.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And be prepared to be shocked, be prepared to be awed um by these animals because they're just amazing.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when you look at them and you think, you know, they used to cover almost all of the country.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there used to be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of these birds in existence, and then we got down to fewer than 20, and now we're back up to 600.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's quite a roller coaster ride in a very condensed period for an ancient bird, right?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: All of this has occurred within the last 70 or 80 years.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: So this all of this transformation is just remarkable.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: But they're survivors, they keep going, they keep trying.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: The good people who are working with them are trying as well.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe they're gonna make it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but whether they do or not, you want to get out and see them as soon as you possibly can.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm gonna wrap this one up for today.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm throwing my email up there.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got questions for me or suggestions or corrections on something I've said, send me a note.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: I always love to hear from the people who watch.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, as I as I do at the end of every show, I encourage you to get outside, front porch, backyard, local park, national park, international, whatever it is.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's the best way to see something, and you never know what it is.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you go there like I did to see the California condors, but on the way in, we saw four wild mustangs up against a vermilion cliff.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Stunningly beautiful.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: That would have made it worth the drive, that alone.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just these kind of things are amazing to see.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So get outside.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do, I ask you, I beg you, stay safe and stay curious.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Scott Harris, I'm the host of Naturally Scott.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: As we discussed at the beginning, uh, the show is not about me, it is about you, and thank you so much for watching today.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day, and we hope to see you again next week.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a Naturally Scott Adventures podcast with Scott Harris.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Naturally Scott Adventures is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, and edited by Frank Sierra.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at Naturally Scott Harris.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Naturally Scott Adventures thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.