Man Pleads Guilty to Shooting California Condor in Grand Canyon

Admitting to shooting a California condor in the Grand Canyon last month, Flagstaff defendant Ronald Tenney Owens (24) pled guilty to taking an endangered species and possessing and discharging a firearm within a National Park. On April 26, 1999, U.S. Magistrate-Judge Stephen Verkamp accepted the plea and the sentence recommended by the U.S. Attorneys Office. Owens was fined $3,200, ordered to forfeit the firearm used in the commission of the violations, placed on one year supervised probation, and as a condition of probation ordered to perform 200 hours of community service under the direction of Grand Canyon National Park, Wildlife Branch.

Owens turned himself into federal and state wildlife officials the week after shooting the California condor with a hand gun while on a March 11, 1999, hiking and fishing trip along the Colorado River near Soap Creek Rapids. Peregrine Fund biologists - who routinely monitor the condors - found and recovered the body of the four-year-old female condor after receiving a tip and noting that Condor #24 had not returned with other condors following a sortie to the Soap Creek Rapids about six miles south of Navajo Bridge (Marble Canyon). The Peregrine Fund (a non-profit organization for the conservation of birds of prey) is largely funding and performing the release activities and the monitoring of the condors in the Southwest.

This case marks the first prosecution for a violation of the Endangered Species Act at Grand Canyon National Park. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arizona Game and Fish Department, and National Park Service conducted the investigation into the incident.

Since December of 1996, 20 condors have been released at the Vermilion Cliffs - a location 20 miles west of the shooting. Condor 24 was hatched at the San Diego Wild Animal Park on April 4, 1995, and released at the Vermillion Cliffs in May 1997. Today, 14 Vermilion Cliffs condors survive and an additional six birds occupy the Hurricane Cliffs area on the Arizona Strip, 50 miles southeast of Saint George, Utah, since their release in November 1998. The Service anticipates reestablishing a population of 150 condors in the canyon lands of northern Arizona and southern Utah.

The condors reintroduced in northern Arizona and southern Utah are designated as an "experimental population" under the Endangered Species Act. While this designation adds management flexibility for agencies in the area, the condors are still fully protected from being harmed or killed.