Condors Making Comeback

by Maria A. Schulz and Patricia Collier

Earlier this year, a pair of Boise-raised condors in the Grand Canyon hatched a chick. That chick, which is now nearly ready to fly on its own, will be the first success story of the Grand Canyon program.

The California Condor was nearly shot, poisoned, and electrocuted into extinction back in the 1980s. The species has since been making a strong comeback. In 1982, there were only 22 condors left in the world, and in 1987 the few birds who were still living were brought into captivity to prevent their extinction.

Today there are about 220 condors in the world: 137 in captivity and 83 in the wild.

"The goal is to have birds producing in the wild," said Bill Heinrich, species restoration manager for the Peregrine Fund and a longtime raptor biologist. The condors, he claims, are "right on schedule."

The Peregrine Fund, best known for its successful efforts to save the endangered peregrine falcons, operates the World Center for Birds of Prey.

The group is responsible for the Grand Canyon reintroduction of the California Condor in Arizona, while other groups are handling the reintroductions in California and Baja, Mexico.

The Peregrine Fund was able to reintroduce peregrine falcons into the wild through a combination of captive breeding and releases into the wild, which culminated in the bird being reestablished in its traditional range, which includes Idaho and Washington.

The Peregrine Falcon is longer considered endangered.

The Fund is using the same approach with the California condor, but it is expected to take longer. The condor has a very long life cycle, about 60 years, and their large eggs take 60 days to hatch.

Chicks aren't ready to fly for about six months, and the birds don't reach sexual maturity until they're five or eight years old.

Since condors also usually lay one egg at a time, it would take longer for the birds to reproduce without a little help from biologists. That's because the biologists practice double clutching -- removing an egg from the nest so that the female produces more eggs.

The newly hatched condors that were incubated by machine are moved to infant incubators that were donated by hospitals.

Since condors are a naturally tame species, biologists are trying to keep them getting too comfortable around people. If the birds turn to people as a food source, it would stop them from relearning survival tactics in the wild. Their human carers therefore try to keep human contact with the condors to an absolute minimum.

Baby condors must initially be fed by hand, but they are fed through a black curtain, and the human hand is disguised under a condor puppet head.

After about three weeks, the baby condors are moved to a pen, where they are raised by adult condors.

Still keeping their distance, biologists observe the condors via video monitors connected to the laboratories through 19 miles of coaxial cable.

After a few years, the juvenile condors are ready for their journey from the World Center of Birds of Prey in Boise to Arizona and the Grand Canyon.

Continuing the policy of discouraging the condors from associating too closely with humans, the Peregrine Fund and the National Park Service assign certain people in Canyon Village with the task of hazing the birds away, by yelling at them and waving their arms.

"It's kind of a dilemma," Heinrich said. "People are watching this beautiful condor they've waited all their lives to see, and then someone runs out of the bushes and scares the birds away."

"It's also just a great opportunity for people to view an endangered species," he said. "The birds are starting to be conditioned to stay 50 to 100 yards away from people."

Within the next 20 years, scientists hope that the condor population will top 400 birds, which would remove them from the endangered list.

"To bring a species back from the brink, from where you had anywhere from 22 to 24 birds back in the mid-1980s, is just a tremendous achievement," said Tom Levites, a condor keeper at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, where a condor egg hatched in April.

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.