Reintroduce the California Condor to its former Northern Range in British Columbia
Reintroduce the California Condor to its former Northern Range in British Columbia, add Canada as a third nation partner in the condor recovery project.Canada has an opportunity of vast wild spaces that might keep human raised condors from human recontact.Climate change might very well extend Condor range further north?
Professor Ann Salomon has some ideas that could be incorporated into a Canadian/First Nations partnership that could be incorporated into a future reintroduction of the California back into its former northern range.Professor Salomon discusses social-ecological interactions to build and cultivate clam gardens. Clam Gardens talk
The Vancouver Aquarium and the federal and provincial governments along with the first nations groups could be our social ecology interaction for species restoration.My thoughts along these lines would be to allow the native American and first nations permissions to hunt whale and marine mammals to periodically surreptitiously feed California condors.this could be an important source of income to the Native American/First Nations groups.
The Native Americans and Inuit on the American side could be contracted to provide marine mammals periodically on the beach in Big Sur to the California Condor population there.First Nations groups could provide marine mammals to the beach for any future British Columbian population.This social-ecological partnership with forest nations would be an important source of employment.I do not know if First Nations groups have an exemption from prohibitions to hunting marine mammals.
Condors fed on Grey Whales in ancient times
A quote from the article; HAVE GRAY WHALES RECOVERED FROM WHALING? A SUMMARY OF NEW SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS: Alter, S.E., Rynes, E., and S.R. Palumbi. 2007. “DNA evidence for historical population size and past ecological impacts of gray whales.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The whales are themselves food for predators such as orcas, and for scavengers such as the nearly extinct California condor that once fed regularly on washed up marine mammal carcasses”
Proposed protocol;
The Washington state native American group has treaty rights to hunt whale and this is recognized under the IWC rules (Inuit) Makah whaling rights The Makah would be contracted with a social-ecological partnership to hunt young gray whales and younger specimens of seal during the migration season to feed Big Sur California Condors on the beach.Makah hunters under contract would travel from Washington state and perform this contract off Big Sur nesting sites.Marine mammal kills will be tested for toxic metals and compounds.Marine mammals will be disassembled for easy access by Condors.This would require a further exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA)(such as for Alaska Native subsistence).
Later as the protocol shows its weakness or strength(heavy metals) as compared to lead pellets this social-ecological partnership could extend to a California Condor reintroduction to British Columbia.
if it’s shown that condors prefer marine mammals over lead shot feeding and all other things being equal then we should consider the contribution of Canadian and American funding of an aboriginal industry of providing ecological support to species restoration.
Yellow Dragon, a mission to repurpose existing ideas into new ideas 