Studying the Habitat of Monterey County (California) Condors with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
My daughter Florence went on a whale and dolphin watching boat trip with her Californian Waldorf School and had become a zealous nature lover. To encourage this interest in nature, I took her to see the exhibit “Bringing the Condors Home” at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.
The exhibit room’s walls were decorated with aerial shots of
what a condor can see at high altitudes.
A stuffed condor with outstretched wings easily held Florence and me
within its six-foot span.
I knew condors made noise flying and told Florence, “The
Native Americans call condors thunderbirds.”
We both were distressed when we learned that in 1985 there
were only 22 condors left in existence.
The Ventana Wilderness Society was given the task of breeding and
reintroducing the condors into the Big Sur Wilderness in 1997, because they had
a track record of success with reintroducing the bald eagle to the same
area. In 2003, at the time of the
exhibit, they had a baseline flock of 22 birds to manage.
The Ventana Wilderness Society uses video cameras and a bar
code data entry system to monitor bird behavior according to the Terra Focus
brochure that was at the exhibit. Terra
Focus, a Silicon Valley firm from Los Altos, provided the Condor Cam at the
exhibit that showed how cameras work in condor habitats.
I looked through the Condor Cam and agreed with the Terra
Focus brochure that “[r]esearchers, students, and the general public anywhere
in the world can watch these animals without having to actually be in the
field.”
I fully supported Florence’s school trips “in the field,”
but thought it would be interesting for students to study condors and polar
bears with this technology. I wished the
exhibit were not a temporary one.
Five years later after visiting this exhibit I went to what
was then the Pinnacles National Monument before it became a national park as
Monterey County’s Youth Services Librarian (MLIS, San José
State University). The Pinnacles area is
a condor-release site in addition to Big Sur, California.
I was at the Pinnacles to participate in the 100th
anniversary of the region’s being declared a national monument along with Muir
Woods and the Grand Canyon by President Teddy Roosevelt (1858 – 1919) in
January 1908.
A ranger had dressed up as Teddy Roosevelt and greeted guests
for the ceremony, which included a nice lunch.
I had helped the Pinnacles organize an essay contest about the park,
which is home to bats, frogs, 400 species of bees, and rare chaparral
vegetation.
I told the park rangers I was seated with how much my
daughter and I liked going to Mount Lassen and brainstormed ideas with them on
how to get classes and families to the Pinnacles for hiking trips. The Pinnacles is a 30-mile wide volcanic area
with craggy peaks, giving the park its name as the Pinnacles.
Before I left, the rangers took me to the bookstore and
donated books to the library for children.
There were seventeen branches in the library system where I worked, and
I ordered many copies of the books, because I knew they were scientifically
accurate. I absolutely loved it that the
children of Monterey County had access to the Pinnacles through the Soledad
entrance to the park.
Today the Pinnacles is America’s newest national park. The condor count has gone up from 22 to
400. They are still rare to see. I think condor cams or films at the Visitor’s
Center might give park visitors an idea of what condor life is like before they
hike. A condor habitat scavenger hunt sheet
might be a good way to give children a condor souvenir from the park.
Park rangers offer hikes on the following themes for
classes: geology, wildflowers, botany/vegetation, caves, bats, and condors and
cultural history. Campground facilities
are available.
The Pinnacles field trip scheduling is very organized on
their website and requires a 60-day advance registration. They also give options for continuing the
Pinnacles Experience on their website for service learning projects such as
making environmental posters, organizing trash pick-up days, and sharing
knowledge at park-organized events.
Learning about condors and how efforts to reintroduce
species into the wild can succeed make Monterey County an interesting vacation
destination.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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