Great escapes: Eight emergency species rescues - environment - 27 April 2009 - New Scientist

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Swooping down in a last-ditch effort to thwart extinction, conservationists have airlifted 50 mountain chicken frogs from the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

While conservation biologists prefer to help a species survive in its natural environment, extreme cases like that of the mountain chicken ( Leptodactylus fallax ) call for extreme rescue measures. Here we present eight more novel attempts at species saving.

1. California condor

In 1987, the last remaining 22 California condors were brought into captivity and bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo . The scientists removed the first-laid clutches to encourage females to produce more eggs, but this meant that roughly half the young had to be reared by humans. To make them as "wild" as possible, they were fed and reared using condor-shaped hand puppets.

The human effort didn't end there. When young condors released into the wild electrocuted themselves on power lines, the scientists installed mock pylons in their cages, delivering mild electric shocks to any bird that perched on them.

Even still, the released birds did not behave "properly" – they congregated in urbanised zones and played with garbage. One researcher said it was like "putting teenagers together without adult supervision. They were behaving like a bunch of hooligans". The researchers used the remaining captive wild birds to discipline the youngsters.

The scientists' work to help the species paid off, with 322 condors known to be living with 172 in the wild as of April 2009. Read about the plight of the condor here .

2. Whooping crane

Less than 20 of the enormous North American whooping cranes were alive in 1940, and the bird was declared endangered in 1967. A captive breeding programme was implemented, which required scientists to dress in white ...

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