Dr. Tom Cade, a professor who preserved the peregrine and is rescuing the California condor, said people making ordinary efforts can help extraordinary birds right here in Pennsylvania.

"One problem you folks are facing are these wind turbines proposed to be built on the migration routes," Cade said on the telephone from his home in Idaho. "I don't think there's any doubt that birds, butterflies, bats and bees - they all get hit by those turbines."

People can lobby to keep wind farms away from the birds' flight path, he said, especially along migration routes into Mexico or along the Kittanning Ridge at Hawk Mountain, site of the nation's first sanctuary for birds of prey.

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary on Thursday presented Cade with its highest honor - the Sarkis Acopian Award. The award carries a $10,000 prize and is the most prestigious honor worldwide for conserving birds of prey.

Cade, a retired Cornell University professor, gave a lecture about condors on Friday at the sanctuary in Kempton, Berks County.

Dr. Keith Bildstein, director of conservation science at Hawk Mountain, and Cade worked together on a project in California to search for new designs for wind turbines that wouldn't kill birds. Some designs spin on a vertical axis and present less area for a bird to hit than the turbines used in Bear Creek and Mahanoy townships on which the axis is horizontal.

"The kinds of towers that have been put up here are capable of killing migrating raptors if they are placed in areas where there are large numbers of raptors. Wind power has a potential as a green source of energy in low-risk areas. If placed in high risk areas, the degree to which one might be considered green evaporates," said Bildstein, who added that one landowner on the Kittanning Ridge is considering towers to general electricity for personal use.

Bildstein said Cade received the Acopian award for pairing the ancient skills of falconers with modern techniques of artificial insemination and incubation to revive the peregrine falcon.

Peregrines live in cliffs, tall buildings and bridges. They swoop down on prey at 175 mph; but, by 1959, they left Pennsylvania, according to the state Game Commission, and other eastern states. The pesticide DDT built up in their bodies and caused their eggshells to thin and break before chicks could hatch.

Banning of DDT in 1972 gave peregrines a chance, and Cade led a team that started catching, breeding and releasing them.

"Although everyone supported his efforts, most people had written off that species as a functional predator in the United States. He was a visionary then �- he's a visionary now - to devote the latter part of his career (to a cause) that at the time had very little hope," Bildstein said.

The Peregrine Fund that Cade founded released 3,000 birds, other groups set loose 4,000 peregrines and the species flew off the endangered list.

"The first birds began to breed in the East in 1980. From that point on, they took off," Cade said last week in an interview.

Peregrines have nested atop PPL's headquarters in Allentown, a tower at PPL's Montour Power Station and in Harrisburg on the roof of the Department of Environmental Protection building named after Rachel Carson, the author who warned the nation about DDT in "Silent Spring."

Cade said he no longer knows how many peregrines live in the wild.

"We have to guess and estimate between 500 and 600 pairs just in the eastern area (of the United States and) another 2,000 in the West ..." Cade said.

Today Cade asks people to remain mindful of threats to birds from other chemicals such as herbicides, flame retardants and pesticides. Diclofenac, a medicine that veterinarians use widely in India and Pakistan, is highly toxic to Asian vultures and is wiping them out, he said.

Habitat destruction, such as what occurs during sorghum planting on the few farms where the aplomado falcon continues to live in northern Mexico, endangers other species. The Peregrine Fund wants to return the aplomado to the southwestern United States where it once lived.

For the California condor - a species that dwindled to 22 birds in the 1980s - the threat comes from lead.

"We have to constantly take care of them, primarily because of lead poisoning. It comes from spent shotgun pellets which they eat in the food they consume. My goal is to see the use of lead ammunition stopped," Cade said.

This year, California implemented a limited ban on using lead bullets in the traditional ranges of condors.

"I don't know how effective it will be. You can still buy them across the counter. As long as (that is) possible, there is going to be people using them illegally I think," Cade said.

Ted Novin of the National Shooting Sports Foundation said there is no scientific evidence that the lead found in condors comes from ammunition. He referred to the foundation's Web site, www.nssf.org, that says paint chips and batteries found in the nests of condors also contain lead.

Ammunition made from alternative metals is scarce, more expensive and also might threaten wildlife, according to the foundation's Web Site, which said hunters favor voluntary restrictions on lead ammunition.

Cade said Arizona tried a voluntary effort four years ago, but the lead levels have not dropped significantly in condors measured there since then. He promotes copper as a substitute for bullets, and points out that waterfowl hunters have used steel shotgun pellets since lead shot was banned for their sport more than a decade ago.

"The long-term prognosis is not so great, but I'm still an optimist," Cade said.

Since the mid-1980s when researchers captured the last 11 pairs of condors, the birds have gained numbers. Breeders at places like the San Diego zoo have raised the population to about 330, but about half remain in captivity.

Breeding, releasing, monitoring and caring for condors costs more than $5 million a year.

When a species population dips as low as the condor's did, genetic problems can plague subsequent generations because the gene pool loses variety.

Condors now have a recessive gene that causes developmental abnormalities. Breeders test to avoid matching females and males that both carry the gene, Cade said.

High costs and developmental problems would loom greater still if researchers ever indulge science fantasy by attempting to re-create extinct species such as the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet by cloning cells taken from museum specimens.

"It would be extremely expensive for one thing. It might or might not work," Cade said, "but it's fun to think about."