The tradition is as old as anyone can remember; toss a coin into a well or a fountain while making a wish and it just might come true. Sadly, this tradition seems to have recently been expanded to include the tossing of coins into natural formations such as ponds, rivers, and canyons for this same purpose. While this newer practice has not been assessed as to its power to ensure the realization of one’s wish, it has been clearly shown to produce serious harm to some of the other creatures with whom we share this planet – most recently, as I have discovered, the California Condor, Gymnogyps californianus.
The link between the practice of wishfully tossing coins into canyons and the harm this practice does to condors was recently brought to my attention through my viewing a broadcast of National Geographic’s television program Wild Areas: Grand Canyon. Included in the hour long parade of images depicting some of the most amazing natural scenery in the United States was a segment chronicling the canyon’s population of California Condors and the scientists from the Peregrine Fund who are working tirelessly to study and simultaneously conserve them. At the conclusion of the segment, after the reporting of the good news of limitations on fragmenting lead ammunition previously used in hunting since their enactment having been shown to decrease the death rate of condors due to lead poisoning (condors feed on “gut piles” left by hunters after field dressing their animals; gut piles that, unbeknownst to the hunters, contained considerable amounts of lead fragments from the bullet or bullets that struck the hunted animal), a dead condor was found by the researchers. X-rays showed the condor’s death was caused by a coin lodged in the bird’s throat.
Thus to all those who may find themselves on an observation point over-looking the Grand Canyon and feel the urge to toss a coin and make a wish, please keep the coin in your pocket until returning to the park’s visitor’s center where you can drop it into the donation box you will likely find there. Should you not find such a box in the center or if you do not return to the visitors center at all but simply move on down the road to your next destination, I’m quite sure the good people at the Peregrine Fund would also be most happy to receive your coin and your wishes for the continued survival of California Condors in the wild. In fact, if I’m any judge of the likelihood of wishes being fulfilled, I am quite certain that a coin dropped into a National Park Service visitor’s center collection box or sent to the Peregrine Fund will help any wish for condor survival or just about any nature-conservation related hope to come true far more readily than tossing that same coin into the canyon will.
