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SENTINEL always for the community VOl 18, nO 2
valleysentinel.com SeVenTy-FiVe CenTS
February 2013
SPOTLIGHT
Cal High football coach Eric Billeci and Karris Johnson
Karris Johnson wins Danville Rotary’s Pete Villa Award By Staff Writer
Danville Rotary held its 15th annual Pete Villa awards luncheon on Monday, December 3rd. The winner was Karris Johnson from California High School. The award, named after Pete Villa, founder of the Thunderbirds youth football program, recognizes the most outstanding high school football players in the San Ramon Valley. See AWARD
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Save Mt. Diablo will lead a free hike to these beautiful Cascade Falls on Mt. Diablo on March 17, 2013. For more information, please see story on page 6. (Photo by Scott Hein)
California Condor recovering from near extinction By James Hale, Wildlife Biologist
The California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) was nearly extirpated due to human activities. The population dipped to a low of nine individuals living in the wild in 1985 and through the help of humans has made a remarkable recovery. Several factors contributed to their demise including shooting, poisoning (lead, strychnine and cyanide), scarcity of food, human disturbance of nesting areas, collisions, DDT and DDE contamination leading to egg shell thinning, calcium stress and other miscellaneous factors. Mortality by fires and the regular use of condors in sacrificial ceremonies by Native American tribes may have contributed to historic population declines as well. As of September 30, 2012 through the success of captive breeding programs the population
in the wild has increased to 230 individuals living in California, Utah, Arizona, Baja, and Mexico. Locally, several individuals from the newly formed Pinnacles National Park population recently visited the observatories on top of Mount Hamilton. The individuals in captivity are 180. Gymnogyps californianus literally translates to naked vulture of California. In early historical times the California condor was widely distributed along the west coast of North America from British Columbia to Baja California in Mexico, and as far east as Colorado and Wyoming. Fossil records of the Pleistocene suggest the condor ranged as far eastward as Texas, New York and Florida. The condor began to retreat from its full former range at a very early
date that probably coincided with the demise of the mega fauna such as the mammoths, giant ground sloths and saber-toothed cats upon which it fed. The earliest contact of humans with condors occurred presumably at Yokut pictograph of a California least around 13,000 years ago when our species first came to Condor at Rocky Hill, near Exeter, CA North America from eastern the rapid environmental changes Asia. It is clear that condors they brought with them led to the were symbolically important to steady decline of the condors’ Native American cultures from population. the archaeological evidence in The California condor is the middens and caves. Condors largest soaring bird of continental were featured in both Yokut North America with a wingspan and Chumash cave art and in of nearly ten feet and a weight of the fabrication of ritual and up to twenty three pounds. Using ceremonial garments. Molluk thermal updrafts, condors can the condor was prominent in soar and glide up to 60 miles per Bay Miwok stories and creation hour and easily travel over one myths. hundred miles per day in search The arrival of the Europeans See CONDOR in the late eighteenth century and page 4
This month’s Special Sections:
Senior Services pages 8-9
Kids Camps page 10