A few words can say a lot. For this post, I note 5 early examples of authors “giving up” on the continued existence of the California condor and doing so with a minimum of words.
In “California Condor Will Soon Be Extinct”, published in the 4 August 1901 edition of the Los Angeles Sunday Herald Illustrated Magazine, Hamilton Wright describes the condor simply as a “thing of the past”.
In 1929, W DeWitt Miller, Willard G Van Name, and Davis Quinn published a pamphlet titled A Crisis in Conservation: Serious Danger of Extinction of Many North American Birds. Sadly, they conclude that the condor is “beyond saving”.
In the Annual Report of the Hawk and Owl Society for 1933, the condor is described as “doomed for centuries”.
“Succession in the Cathartine Dynasty” by Loye Miller, a noted expert on fossil birds, was published in the September-October 1942 issue of the journal Condor. In this article, Miller describes the California condor as a “senile species”:
My collection of California condor postcards includes one that describes the birds as “out-peopled”, a creative way of expressing that they face extinction as a result of human activities.
All of the brief statements above are part of my Chronicle in Names, a centuries-long history of the California condor and humanity told with statements such as the 5 above. To read the Chronicle in Names, please visit the California Condor Reference.
To view the postcard referred to above, see the post Postal miscellaneous.
Pseudogryps 