A female coho is examined by a biologist at Sonoma County’s Warm Springs Hatchery. The facility is home to a captive broodstock program that’s trying to both preserve the wild gene pool of Russian River coho and to return the fish to creeks in the river’s watershed.

The National Marine Fisheries Service just unveiled a species recovery plan for Central California's critically endangered coho salmon population. The notes that both recent studies and this winter's generally dismal spawning numbers suggest the region's coho population is collapsing.

How bad is the situation? Charlotte Ambrose, the NMFS biologist who led the team that developed the recovery plan, says that "it's condor time for coho salmon." She's invoking the California condor both as a reminder of the bird's close brush with extinction in the 1980s and also as a spur to the same kind of decisive action and long-term commitment that saved one of the nation’s emblematic species.

The coho plan, which is now open for public comment before final adoption, focuses on 28 watersheds between Mendocino and Santa Cruz counties that still harbor the species. That's about one-third of the coho's historical habitat, but the recovery strategy emphasizes focusing recovery efforts where they have the highest chance of success. Marin County's Lagunitas Creek watershed, the site of concerted local action to save the coho since the late 1990s, is one of the areas targeted for the recovery effort.

And what will the recovery efforts consist of?

The plan lays out a catalog of actions needed to deal with threats posed by water diversions, development, and other activity near salmon streams. Many of these threats are surprisingly mundane. Jon Ambrose, a NMFS biologist in Santa Rosa who has worked on the recovery plan (and spouse of recovery coordinator Charlotte Ambrose), offers "stream simplification" as an example.

"What happens is when you have a lot of people living next to the stream, that there seems to be a tendency for the flood engineer in all of us to come to the forefront, and that worries people," Ambrose says. "Building too close to a stream, putting infrastructure too close to a stream, causes people to want to make sure flooding doesn't happen, so they remove the wood. And removing that wood is removing the habitat necessary for coho, because that large woody debris forms the deep pools that these fish need during the summer, it provides protection against predators, and during big winter flow events it provides protection against being blown out into the ocean."

The recovery plan calls for a sweeping program of habitat restoration to prevent the further decline of coho runs. It would require local governments and agencies to consult NMFS on land-use decisions that might affect the coho. The blueprint also envisions an ongoing cooperative effort involving state and federal wildlife agencies, local government, landowners (including forestry companies along the coast), and local conservation groups such as Marin County's Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN).

The recovery strategy also calls for new investment in captive broodstock programs like the one at Warm Spring Hatchery in Sonoma County. That effort, run under the auspices of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, is trying to preserve the genetic diversity of Russian River coho and to restore fish to streams in the river's watershed.

NMFS says if the plan is put into effect, it could take 50 to 100 years for California coho to recover. Citing a 2004 estimate from a state coho recovery plan, the agency puts the cost at $3 billion to $5 billion–maybe more.

Jon Ambrose concedes the project to bring back the coho, a once prolific species that has all but vanished, seems like a daunting one. But he says he's optimistic.

"I gave a presentation on this recovery plan a couple weeks ago, and I was going through the numbers showing the decline, and people got really kind of depressed," he says. "But this is doable. I've worked with a lot of threatened and endangered species throughout my career. Oftentimes people want to throw up their hands and say nothing can be done. And I categorically disagree. This is doable–it's just complex."

This surprised me. By now, I am used to the usual suspects of species degradation: urban sprawl, loss of habitat, pollution, shrinking resources. Those are almost always given as the explanation for why a particular species is threatened or endangered.

Not so with the California condor. Those factors certainly put pressure on the condor to survive in California, but surprisingly, there is one factor that trumps all of those, according to wildlife biologists.

Lead bullets.

Not because condors are shot by guns with lead bullets – no, lead bullets are dangerous to condors because they eat them.

Condors are like vultures; they feed on carrion. Dead animals. And many animals in the wild die when they're shot by hunters. So when an animal is shot, and then gets away from the hunter before it dies, or when a hunter guts an animal in the field and leaves the remains behind, that meat has lead fragments in it. So it's easy for California condors to ingest lead, and that can be fatal.

Lead has been shown to be hazardous to humans in even small amounts. Condors weigh about 20 pounds, so it doesn't take much lead to harm them.

The state legislature passed a law in July that bans lead bullets from areas with condors, from the San Francisco Bay Area south to San Diego.

Hunters are reluctant to simply throw away all of their lead ammunition, though, to purchase copper bullets at a higher price. And many of them are unaware of the law – or unaware that the ammo they're using is lead. Many lead bullets are topped with copper, so they look like copper bullets. This not only makes it hard for hunters to identify which of their bullets are lead-based, but it makes it difficult for state parks rangers to identify them, as well.

Listen to the Condor Return radio report online.

The Oakland Zoo Staff visit the California Condor

There we were, 12 Oakland Zoo staff, winding our way down the Big Sur coast. We were spending a clear, bright Sunday morning with Sari, a biologist from the Ventana Wildlife Society, in hopes of learning about condors and perhaps catching a glimpse of this highly endangered bird. On route from the Ventana Wildlife Society's rustic outpost office in Andrew Molera Park, Sari told us a bit about condor history, her work and the nature of condor breeding.

The California Condor was at the brink of extinction due to habitat loss, poaching and lead and DDT poisoning. In 1987, the US government approved a captive breeding program and the 22 remaining condors were captured and bred at various California zoos with the help of the Ventana Wildlife Society. Now 147 California Condors live freely and are beginning to reproduce in the wild: a true conservation success story!

Though lead poisoning is still a threat (see Quest Piece), conservationists hope that recent lead bullet legislation will bring that threat to an end. The Ventana Wildlife Society also trains their charges to avoid electrical wires, another challenge to their survival.

Sari's job is to monitor all of the 42 condors that call Big Sur home. She tracks them with antennae that pick up their radio tags every day, and if 5 days go by without seeing one of them, she goes on a mission to find them. Not surprisingly, Sari loves her job.

Us zoo folk were most impressed by their unique breeding story. Condors do not successfully reproduce until age nine and then lay only one egg every two winters. Once hatched, the chick stays in the nest for six months, completely dependent on parental feeding and care. Even after fledging, the young condor sticks with the parent for another year or so. This is a lot for a bird and it is no wonder that bringing the population back from the brink requires some help.

Finally, we stopped just a bit north of Julia Pfieffer Park and piled out:

Big Sur, big cliffs, big sky, big expectations…and then there they were…really BIG BIRDS! Three condors sat on pines not too far from us, bending the tips of the tree with their weight. Through Sari's scope or binoculars, we could see their radio tag numbers, their bald pink heads, their feathery, boa-like neck feathers and their giant bodies.

As we observed their behaviors of submissive biting and displacing each other on their chosen perches, random people stopped their cars to see what we were up to and Sari took time to talk to each newly inspired condor enthusiast.

Then, against all seeming odds, they lifted their bodies, displayed their nine and half feet wingspan, and soared right by us…once, twice, three times. They seemed to be riding the wind, representing everything good that we humans can do for nature, once we try.

You, too, can take a tour with Ventana, every second Sunday of the month.

Visit "Bringing the Condors Home," a fantastic condor exhibit that will be at The Oakland Zoo this September.