JULY 11, 2019
by Lindsay Whitehurst
A sweeping red-rock cliff at
Utah's Zion National Park is now the home of a new California condor chick as
the species makes a comeback in the wild three decades after they were on the
brink of extinction, biologists have confirmed.
The chick is believed to have
hatched in early May on the cliffs just north of Angels Landing, park rangers
said. If it survives to flying age in November, it will be the first chick to
fledge at the park.
"We're hoping it does
fledge, it takes off out of the nest and successfully flies off," said
Eugenne Moisa with Zion National Park on Wednesday.
Birds raised in captivity were
first released at Vermilion Cliffs near the Arizona-Utah line in 1996, and now
more than 88 flying in the two states.
The new chick's parents are the
only identified breeding pair in Zion, and are estimated to have been together
two years. The female was born in 2006 at the San Diego Zoo and the male
hatched in 2009 in Boise, Idaho, before being released into the wild.
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