The unsteady comeback of the California condor

IT MAY HAVE been the smelliest job in conservation. Whoever drew the short straw sat in a hole in the dirt underneath a carcass. Then they waited for a California condor to come and have a snack. “That’s not a pretty job at all,” says Chandra David, an animal keeper for the Los Angeles Zoo. “When a bird would land somebody would radio in saying ‘Now!’ and they would reach up and grab the bird’s legs.” This, and other less nauseating methods, is how the last remaining condors were brought in from the wild in the 1980s.