Los Angeles Zoo uses new tactic to boost California condor population

CBS NEWS November 23, 2019, 11:08 AM

The California condor breeding program at the Los Angeles Zoo helped saved the species after it was on the brink of extinction in the early 1980s. Now, the zoo has discovered a new technique to keep the population of the largest bird in North America growing.

In 1982, there were only 22 condors, which have a wingspan of 9.5 feet, in the wild, according to Steve Kirkland, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By 1984, the breeding population was down to nine, he said.

Scientists captured all the surviving condors and the breeding program at the Los Angeles Zoo was formed, CBS Los Angeles reporter Joy Benedict reports. This year, the 1,000th condor reared his head inside a rocky hillside at Zion National Park.

"This is a California native bird. This belongs right in our backyard," said Mike Clark, the condor keeper at the zoo.

In the wild, condors might raise one chick every two years, but at the zoo, when a condor lays an egg, keepers take it, prompting the bird to lay another. Then, Clark tried something never done before. He wanted to know if a parent would foster more than one chick, so he approached a bird who knew him well.

"Here is a sexually mature bird that has been breeding for years and years and years, raised tons of chicks with another bird. She sorta kinda got attached to me because I was the only one she was interacting with," Clark said.

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California condor chick numbers on rise thanks to innovative procedure

Los Angeles Zoo has come up with a unique way of expanding the population of the rare California condor.

Staff have been working on saving the condor for 30 years, and have now mastered how to fertilise its eggs.

The scavenging birds became so rare in the wild that the last 27 of the species were captured in 1987 and brought into captivity to try and save them from extinction.

The condors, which have a wingspan of up to 9 feet (274 cm), were reintroduced into the wild in the early 1990s but still the numbers didn't grow at an exponential rate.

This is because the condor in the wild only gives birth to one fertile egg a year and that offspring is looked after by two parents.

This year, the zoo has incubated 6 eggs and placed them with three sets of condor parents with great success.

The California condor's numbers in the wild dwindled after human settlement in California, because of poaching, lead poisoning from shot animals they feed on and egg collectors at the beginning of the 20th century. The species is the only surviving bird in the Gymnogyps genus and can live up to 40 years old.

With egg collecting a thing of the past and new laws brought in banning lead in hunter ammunition, the species now has a chance to survive in the wild.

There are now around 500 California condors left in the world.

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The Tiny Threat That’s Killing North America’s Largest Bird

Some critically endangered California condors carry genes that are causing fatal dwarfism in their offspring. Scientists are working on a genetic test to help save the species.

 

Every egg matters when you’re trying to save a critically endangered bird from extinction.

That’s especially true for California condors, North America’s largest birds with a 10-foot wingspan. Condors nearly went extinct in the 1980s as a result of hunting, lead contamination, DDT poisoning, and other factors. The last 22 California condors were brought into captivity in 1987 in a last-ditch effort to breed them in safety and save the species from disappearing.

That desperate move was a success. Today, the California condor population has risen to more than 435—all descended from just 14 breeding individuals—and the birds have returned to the skies above California, Arizona, Utah, and Baja, Mexico.

That number would be much higher, however, if every California condor egg hatched a healthy young chick. That isn’t always the case. Eggs fail in captivity and in the wild for a number of reasons, but one of the most worrying is a rare genetic condition called chondrodystrophy, a lethal form of dwarfism.

 “The chicks born with this disease show very short extremities,” said Cynthia Steiner, acting associate director of genetics at San Diego Zoo Global, who is studying the disease. “It produces late embryonic mortality. The chicks die right before or right after hatching.”

Chondrodystrophy first showed up in five California condor eggs in the late 1990s, a period when the population was just starting to climb again. “It was a big alarm for the managers of the captive population,” Steiner said. Since then the problem has shown up several other times, although exactly how often is unclear because not every failed egg is fully examined to determine why it did not hatch successfully. Steiner said the data researchers do have suggests that some form of malformation and embryonic death affected about 120 fertile eggs over the past 22 years.

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Contamination from marine mammals may hamper recovery of California condors

Date: August 8, 2016

Source: University of California - San Diego

Biologists have discovered high levels of pesticides and other contaminants from marine mammals in the tissues of endangered California condors living near the coast that they say could complicate recovery efforts for the largest land bird in North America.

"Even though marine mammals are a potentially abundant food source for condors, they might not be that safe to eat," said Carolyn Kurle, an assistant professor of biology at UC San Diego and one of the senior authors of a study published this week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that found high levels of persistent contaminants in California condors inhabiting the Central California coast when compared to inland condors.

California condors, vultures that feed on the carcasses of dead animals, were driven to near extinction in the 1980s, but their population has grown to over 400 birds today due in large part to the California Condor Recovery Program's efforts. However, condors are not out of the woods yet. Research has demonstrated that lead poisoning from feeding on carcasses contaminated with lead-based ammunition is the principal threat preventing condor recovery.

Some California condors that were re-introduced into the wild in recent decades as part of recovery efforts supplement their diet with carcasses of marine mammals, which are less likely than land-based animals to contain lead in their tissues.

Because marine mammal carcasses can be an abundant food source for coastal scavengers and are thought to have helped prevent the extinction of California condors at the end of the last ice age, 11,700 years ago, biologists welcomed this type of ocean-front dining as a likely boon to the condors' recovery efforts.

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Good news for California condors as huge birds reach crucial breakthrough

February 24, 20164:15 PM MST

Years of intense care, vigilance and dedication focused on the California condor captive breeding program started in the 1980s have reached an astonishing milestone for America’s largest bird. On Monday the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that “more California condors hatched and fledged in the wild last year than adult wild condors died” and, for the beleaguered condors, that is truly significant news. More specifically, 14 young California condors fledged and left their nests compared to the 12 that died.

While this may seem like only a token in the condors’ survival record, officials are elated by this achievement since only 22 wild California condors remained alive in the 1980s. All of these remaining condors were captured, and a strict breeding program began that has become successful enough to release a few birds into the wild annually.

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California condor that helped save species returns to wild

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Banking into the wind and then gliding out of sight, a male California condor flew back into the wild after a captive breeding program that helped save North America's largest species of land bird.

The 35-year-old bird named AC-4 soared out of his open pen earlier this week at a canyon rim inside the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, in central California's Kern County. He had been one of just 23 condors left in the world in the 1980s.

It was the bird's first free flight since 1985, when a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service team captured him near the same spot. It was part of a last-ditch attempt to stop the extinction of the California condor, which has a wing span of more than 9 feet.

AC-4 needed only a few minutes to get his bearings before flying out of the pen and over the canyon, said Joseph Brandt, a lead condor biologist with the wildlife service. Brandt was sitting on a hilltop nearby to watch the release.

"He kind of flew right past us. It was really incredible," Brandt said by telephone Thursday.

Lead poisoning is believed one of the main factors that drove California condors toward extinction. The birds ingest fragments of lead bullets when they feed on carcasses of animals shot by hunters.

California lawmakers voted in 2013 to phase out lead bullets for hunting by 2019.

Biologists believe AC-4 was 5 to 7 years old when they captured him for the captive breeding program. He fathered the first chick born in the program, giving the program's founders greater hope they could save the species.

In all, AC-4 sired 30 condor chicks that have been successfully released into the wild.

"Many people have poured their heart and soul" into saving the condors, Jesse Grantham, a former condor program coordinator and part of the original team that captured AC-4, said in a statement from the wildlife service.

This year, biologists recorded 19 wild condor nests in central and Southern California, more nests than at any point this century, Brandt said.

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The Lost Condor: Man finds rare Grand Canyon bird near Cortez

By Shannon Livick

The Cortez Journal

A California condor “missing and feared dead” from near Grand Canyon National Park, was found Thursday by seasonal park ranger Franz Carver.

Carver, who drives around looking for birds on his days off, spotted the California condor on Thursday, April 16, in the Summit Ridge area, south of Dolores.

At first, he thought it was a common bird.

“I saw this bird and thought it was a turkey vulture, but thought that it was too big,” Carver said.

So Carver, who describes himself as an amateur photographer who loves birds, stopped to take some photographs.

“I probably took 15 to 20 shots,” he said. “I thanked the bird for being so cooperative.”

It wasn’t until he downloaded the photographs that he saw a tag that read “N8” on the bird’s wing. 

“Then I knew it was a condor,” he said.

Carver quickly did some research and found a list of birds on the Grand Canyon National Park’s website.

It turns out that N8, also known as bird 680, is a 2-year-old male. The park listed him as “missing and feared dead” in February.

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3D Technology And Supercomputers Used To Help Endangered Species

July 13, 2014

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The California Condor is the largest wild bird in North America, with an average height of 50 inches and a wingspan around 9 feet. The Condor can live between 45 and 80 years, according to Defenders of Wildlife. The bird is listed as endangered, coming so close to extinction that in 1986 there were only 22 wild Condors left. The current population of just over 400 wild birds is due to extraordinary measures taken in 1987 when all of the remaining birds were captured and bred in captivity to keep the species from extinction. Condors were reintroduced into the wild in 1992, and conservation efforts continue today.

A team of researchers — including scientists from the US Geological Survey (USGS), the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, and others — has developed a new methodology that combines 3D technology and advanced range estimator technologies. This methodology provides highly detailed data on the range and movements of terrestrial, aquatic, and avian wildlife species. One of the focuses of this study, published online in PLOS ONE, was the California Condor, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of the range and movements of the birds, using miniaturized GPS biotelemetry units attached to every Condo released into the wild.

“We have been calculating home ranges for the tracked condors in three dimensions for the first time using this GPS location data, and our novel density estimator was used to incorporate the vertical component of animal movements into projections of space-use,” said James Sheppard, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Conservation Research, in a recent statement.

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Condor Visits San Mateo County for First Time in 110 Years

Some great news from condor biologists: the first confirmed California condor visit to San Mateo County in a century took place in late May. Condor 597, a three-year-old female who hatched in the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park in April 2011, was recorded by a motion-sensitive wildlife camera in a forested area near Pescadero. Pescadero is a small coastal town about 35 miles south of San Francisco and six miles from Año Nuevo State Park, a famed elephant seal rookery where occasional giant carcasses offer a potential prime source of condor chow.

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Oakland Zoo's facility for poisoned condors gets 1st patient

Peter Fimrite

Published 5:03 pm, Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The big, black vulture, its yellowish-orange eyes bulging, stared at its visitors through a tiny window in the enclosure at the Oakland Zoo.

It was a penetrating look, as if the bird knew something that you didn't know. Unusual intelligence is, in fact, a characteristic of the California condor, said Andrea Goodnight, the associate veterinarian at the zoo.

"She knows we are here," whispered Goodnight about No. 444, the first lead-poisoned bird to be treated at the zoo's new Condor Recovery Center. "They are very smart birds."

The 16-pound bird, with a 9.5-foot wingspan, was driven to the Oakland zoo on Thursday from Pinnacles National Park after field biologists captured her and tests detected high levels of lead in her blood.

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Yurok tribe works to protect a raptor it reveres: California condor

SAN FRANCISCO — The Yurok name for the bird that soared closest to the creator and could deliver the people’s prayers is “prey-go-neesh.”

The English name for the Pleistocene-era throwback with the 91/2-foot wingspan is California condor, and by 1982 there were just 22 left.

Now, California’s largest tribe has come closer to reuniting with the raptor whose feathers grace its sacred regalia, while working to revive the species.

An agreement signed by the tribe last month with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the California Department of Parks and Recreation and the Ventana Wildlife Society begins a process that could make Yurok ancestral land California’s northernmost condor release site.

The deal resulted from the tribe’s extensive evaluation of habitat and likely food supply — carcasses of marine mammals, downed livestock and bullet-scarred game left behind by hunters.

“This is the culmination of five years of work … but our journey is continuing,” said wildlife biologist Chris West, who directs the condor program for the Yurok tribe.

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Novel Study Using New Technologies Outlines Importance of California Condor Social Groups

July 16, 2013 — The intricate social hierarchy of the California condor, an endangered species, is something that could not be studied until recently due to the severe reduction of this population in the wild. The first formal study on this species, based on remote video observation of reintroduced populations, indicates that the species has a complex system of interactions based on dominance. The study further indicates that, with the effect of human disturbance and lead poisoning removed from the equation, an individual bird that does not successfully integrate into the structure will have reduced survivability.

"We were able to engage in this effort due to the use of new technologies that allow us to observe these newly reintroduced groups without disturbing them," said James Sheppard, a conservation biologist for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. "This ongoing study provides us information about these unique birds that was essentially lost when the populations disappeared in the wild and will help us with our ongoing efforts to recover this species."

The California condor was reduced to little more than a dozen individuals in the 1980s before a collaborative captive-breeding program raised the population to a status where this species could be reintroduced into the wild again. The study, which appeared in a recent issue of Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, outlines the fluidity of the bird's hierarchical social structure and the role dominance plays among the group.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130716092749.htm

California condor recovery reaches landmark

200th California condor chick hatches at The Peregrine Fund's captive breeding facility

May 2013. A tiny California condor chick marked a major milestone for The Peregrine Fund. It was the 200th chick to hatch in the conservation group's captive breeding facility since joining the effort to breed endangered condors in 1993.

20 eggs this year

The captive breeding facility at The Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey is home to 62 condors, the world's largest flock of captive condors. This year, 18 pairs each produced 20 eggs. When the chicks are about 9 months old, they are transferred to The Peregrine Fund's release site near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, where they join the wild flock, which currently numbers 72 birds.

"We are thrilled to reach the 200 mark," said Marti Jenkins, who oversees the condor propagation program. "Every chick takes us one step closer to saving this magnificent species from extinction."

Wild foster parents

The Peregrine Fund works closely with three other facilities - Los Angeles Zoo, San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and Oregon Zoo -- that raise California Condors. This year, two of the eggs produced in Boise were placed in the nests of wild condors in California to replace eggs that were not viable. Both eggs hatched and are being reared by their wild foster parents. A third egg was transferred to the Oregon Zoo and also hatched successfully.

Read on: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/peregrine-condor.html

Lead Ammo Poisons Condors in Grand Canyon

Douglas Main, Staff Writer

Date: 16 April 2013 Time: 11:54 AM ET

Critically endangered condors that live near the Grand Canyon are being poisoned by lead used in ammunition, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. So far this year, seven out of the 80 California condors that live in the area have died, and three of these deaths have been "definitively linked to lead poisoning from ingesting spent lead ammunition fragments in carrion, and lead poisoning is suspected in the other four deaths," according to the group. 

These raptors, the largest birds in North America, are especially vulnerable to poisoning from ammunition because they feed on dead animals, which have often been shot by hunters using lead bullets and shotgun pellets, studies on the birds have shown. The lead can then concentrate in their bodies, to devastating effect.

"Lead is dangerous to people and wildlife, even at very low levels, which is why it is critical that we take mandatory actions to remove it from ammunition and require less toxic alternatives," said Sandy Bahr, with the Sierra Club, in the statement.

http://www.livescience.com/28751-lead-ammo-poisons-condors.html

Lead bullet fragments poison rare US condors

By Matt McGrath, Environment correspondent, BBC News

California condors are under continuing threat from lead ammunition fragments

Conservationists in the United States say that fragments of lead ammunition continue to take a desperate toll on one of the country's rarest birds.

Since December, seven wild California condors from a population of 80 have died in the Grand Canyon area.

Three of the deaths have been definitively linked to ingesting lead from bullets in the carcasses of prey.

Campaigners are calling for a ban on the use of lead ammunition on public lands.

 “The continuous deaths of Grand Canyon condors from lead poisoning is preventable, ”  Jeff MillerCentre for Biological Diversity

The California condor is one of the biggest US birds but is considered critically endangered according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Carrion shooting

In an effort to save the high flying species, 166 of the birds have beenreintroduced in Arizona and Utah since 1996.

Of these, 81 have died or disappeared. But experts believe that at least 38 of the birds have died as a result of eating lead fragments left in the guts piles and carcasses of game, shot by hunters. Condors are scavengers and mainly eat large amounts of carrion.

Campaigners like Jeff Miller from the Centre for Biological Diversity say there are actions that can be taken to reduce the risk to the birds.

"The continuous deaths of Grand Canyon condors from lead poisoning is preventable if we finally treat toxic lead ammunition as we did lead paint and gasoline," he said.

Many of the condors require treatment each year as a consequence of lead exposure

Even though the Arizona Game and Fish Department distributes copper ammunition free to hunters, a small number continue to use lead. As a result each year up to half of the wild Grand Canyon condors require chelation treatment to remove high levels of lead from their blood.

"It is critical that we take mandatory actions to remove it from ammunition and require less toxic alternatives, said Sandy Bahr from the Sierra Club.

"Requiring non lead ammunition for hunting on public land would be an important step in limiting lead exposure for condors and other wildlife," she added.

A group of scientists, doctors and public health experts have recently issued a statement calling for lead ammunition for hunting to be phased out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22174702