MEMORIES OF MY CONDOR BOOK, Photo at the Los Angeles Zoo

L-R: Los Angeles Zoo Director, Betty White, Caroline Arnold, GLAZA President, Michael Wallace. At the Los Angeles Zoo, 1993.

In 1993 I published my book ON THE BRINK OFEXTINCTION: The California Condor, illustrated with photos by Michael Wallace, then the director of the condor recovery program at the Los Angeles Zoo. At the time, fewer than one hundred condors remained in the wild. The only hope to increase their numbers was to raise them in captivity and then release them into the wild. My book chronicles that process. Today there are more than five hundred flying free in the wild!

My friend Brenda Scott Royce, editor of Zoo Magazine, recently shared this photo with me that she discovered in their photo archive. In it I am celebrating the publication of the book with Mike Wallace, zoo supporter Betty White, the President of GLAZA, and the zoo director. It brought back many memories of that project. The book has long been out of print, but you can still find it in libraries. Condors are magnificent birds, with the widest wingspan—more than nine feet!—of any land based bird in North America. If you are lucky, you might see one soaring high over the mountains, forests, and coast of California, or perhaps over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and other places where they have been reintroduced into their historic territory. 

On the Brink of Extinction: The California Condor (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993)