California Condor chick being fed by a puppet as part of the captive breeding program. Photo by Ron Garrison at the San Diego Zoo for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, via WikiMedia Commons.
Back in 1973 when the Endangered Species Act put the California Condor under protection, the species’ numbers were still dwindling at an alarming rate. In the following decade the remaining population was captured and bred in captivity, so as to protect chicks and release them into the wild. And last year, more condors were born and raised in the wild (14) than the number of adult wild condors that died (12), which represents success in the breeding program. There are now over 250 California Condors in the wild, a vast improvement over the 22 surviving birds that were captured for the start of the breeding program.
Officials also counted 27 wild condor nests last year. Nineteen were in California, three in the Arizona-Utah border area and five in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona has a condor nest, officials said, as do Zion National Park in Utah and Pinnacles National Park in central California.
The captive breeding program continues with the Peregrine Fund‘s World Center for Birds of Prey near Boise being the top egg producer, with six eggs laid this spring and nine more expected.
“So far it’s going fantastic,” said Marti Jenkins, condor propagation manager at the facility.
She said two eggs laid at the facility last year were placed in wild nests in California where eggs were either infertile or damaged. The replacement eggs produced fledglings that officials count in the wild population.
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