PI Travels Central Coast to Solve Condor Mystery

A Los Angeles-based private investigator is heading the search for whoever shot two endangered California condors in the isolated central part of the state, and his backers are offering $40,500 in reward money.

Bruce Robertson has been hired by the Center for Biological Diversity, which has also printed 600 "wanted" posters to help track down the culprits, the Monterey County Herald reported.

Robertson told The Herald he has put more than 1,000 miles on his car driving around the condor's Central Coast range since he began working on the case last month.

The two giant birds, with wingspans up to nine feet, were shot earlier this year, before scientists captured them in poor condition in March. Both condors were full of shotgun pellets and had lead poisoning.

One of the shot birds, Condor 286, died May 11 of lead poisoning at the Los Angeles Zoo, The Herald reported. The other, Condor 375, was treated at the zoo and a wildlife sanctuary, then released back to the wild on May 1.

The wanted posters have been mailed to farms and ranches in the condor range, and they're done in an Old West style, Robertson told the Herald.

That's appropriate in some ways because the Monterey-San Benito county borderland is "a very rural area. People have been living on ranches in the back country for several generations. It could be a hundred years ago," he told the paper.

Biologists have been nurturing California condors back from near extinction since the 1980s, when just 22 of them remained in the state. Since then, the California condor count has increased to 336, and many have been returned to the skies of Central California and near the Grand Canyon, in Arizona.

Harming condors is a federal felony and law enforcement officials are also investigating.

Robertson told The New York Times he planned to distribute more wanted posters on doorsteps, telephone poles and gun shops across the Central Coast this weekend.

"People will start talking," he told The Times, "when they find out about the money."