Endangered Condors Make Strong Comeback

Sixteen years after nearly becoming extinct, California condors are making a surprising comeback, expanding their numbers and their range far beyond the Ventura County back country where the ambitious experiment to rescue them began.

Scientists credit new chick rearing and release strategies for enabling the condor to wing its way back from the brink of annihilation.

In the last decade, the California condor population has increased fivefold, to 150 birds. A record 20 chicks were born this year at captive breeding sites at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Los Angeles Zoo and Boise-based World Center for Birds of Prey.

“We’re at a pivotal point as far as the condor recovery program is concerned,” said Robert Mesta, a federal biologist who coordinates the program at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service headquarters for condor recovery in Ventura. “They’re moving back into their historical range, finding food on their own and exhibiting some breeding behavior.”

Even skeptics, who several years ago feared recovery was too late and the species doomed, are amazed at the turnaround. Scientists are increasingly optimistic the giant carrion feeder with the 10-foot wingspan has a chance to reclaim the skies over California and become established in other Western states.

“I was pretty pessimistic about saving condors in California because there’s too many human activities going on there,” said Lloyd F. Kiff, science director for the Peregrine Fund, a nonprofit group that breeds condors in Idaho. “It’s been a fairly incredible recovery. It’s far better than I thought it could be.”

Of course, with only 150 left on the planet, the California condor population is still not robust enough to shed its endangered species status. Condors remain one of the world’s rarest and most imperiled birds. Wild populations are still small enough to be vulnerable to disease, poaching and predators, according to scientists.

Condors are relics, one of the last giant animals from the days when woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers roamed America. Condor fossils have been found from New York to Texas and from the La Brea Tar Pits to Florida. Though they resemble giant buzzards, scientists say they are related to storks.

Wild Bird Population Plummeted in 1987

Hundreds of the great birds once traversed mountain ranges from Lake Casitas to Lake Tahoe, feeding on deer guts and dead livestock, but disappeared from the skies in 1987 when six remaining wild birds were captured and sent to the Los Angeles Zoo for breeding.

An initial attempt to reintroduce them to the wild five years later at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary near Fillmore failed when five birds crashed into power lines and died. The survivors were returned to the zoo to replenish their numbers.

Concern remains over whether Southern California, historically a condor stronghold, is the best place to reestablish the bird. Although the number of wild birds is growing, long-term prospects are questionable as civilization encroaches deeper into wild areas and brings with it pollution and other man-made hazards. Consequently, federal biologists are planting new condor colonies farther and farther away from Southern California to ensure species survival.

“We’re doing an atrocious job of protecting large tracts of viable habitats in California. How does that bode in the long haul for the condor? Not very well,” said Kimball L. Garrett, ornithology collections manager at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

And the cost of the program, $25 million and counting, has made the condor a target for critics of the Endangered Species Act. It costs about $2,000 annually to feed each of the adult birds, Kiff said. The expense strains the government’s ability to sustain the recovery, and increasingly, private groups--including the Peregrine Fund and the Ventana Wilderness Sanctuary, which manages Big Sur condors--are being asked to carry more of the load.

Nonetheless, after years of fits and starts, the future is looking brighter for the condor. Scientists say El Nino’s moist weather may have enabled the birds to mate two months longer than normal, producing the record brood of 20 chicks.

The birds also have gained a foothold in their native habitat. Sixteen soar on thermal gusts over remote canyons of Los Padres National Forest and across the brushy escarpments of northern Ventura County. Five cruise the hills above Big Sur. Fourteen were set free northeast of the Grand Canyon last year. The rest remain in captivity, some as a brood stock, others awaiting release.

In the next three months, 22 juvenile condors will be released--the most ever in a season--with the first group of nine scheduled to be turned loose Nov. 18 at Hurricane Cliffs near Page, Ariz. The rest will be set free in California in January, Mesta said.

By the end of winter, 57 condors will be living in the wild, a 63% increase over today’s numbers. It has been 60 years since that many California condors were flying free.

And condors are surviving longer in the wild, scientists say. Whereas half the condors released at the Sespe sanctuary in 1992-93 perished, one in five birds released elsewhere between 1995 and 1997 died, Jane Hendron, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, said. The primary threats to wild condors are vandals who shoot them, power lines and attacks from other birds of prey, principally golden eagles.

Control Resembles Captivity Without Bars

Mortality may be down, but critics say that is because the birds are carefully controlled in the outdoors. Field crews follow the condors, monitoring their every move every day of the year. They leave them food, shoo them from hazards and rough them up during routine handling to reinforce fear of humans.

“It’s kind of artificial, sort of captivity without walls. There’s still a long way to go,” said Mark Palmer, program director for the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute.

Nevertheless, Mesta said 5-year-old condors in the wild are growing up and starting to act like true wild animals. They are finding their own food and flying farther from the spots where they were released.

Now, scientists say condors are approaching a crossroads that will determine whether they can breed and thrive in nature. For the first time, scientists have observed classic condor courtship behavior in two pairs of wild birds living in the Santa Barbara County back country.

“When they get the first reproduction in the wild, that’s an important turning point. It’ll be almost like they’ll be home free,” Garrett said.

Last December, a condor identified as 07 sauntered up to female condor 08, bobbing his head, spreading his wings making a clumsy attempt to mate with her. Male 00 made a similar pass at another female. Because condors don’t mate until about age 6, researchers hope the courtship displays last year culminate in breeding next year.

“I thought they were going to disappear from the face of the earth in the 1970s,” said Brian Walton, director of the Predatory Bird Research Group at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “If you told anyone in the ‘60s we would be looking at 150 condors, a large successful breeding program and birds in several states, they never would have believed it.”

Condors are the largest bird in North America. They glide on warm air gusts that, like freeways, carry them over mountain ranges at 55 mph, covering 300 miles in a day. An Arizona condor recently was spotted at Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming. California birds are making nonstop flights from the San Luis Obispo County back country south past Reyes Peak in Ventura County into the Tehachapi Mountains and north to Tulare County. Mesta said it is a sure sign they are foraging for food and recolonizing their historic range.

Close Encounter With C-5 of Birds

For the intrepid, willing to brave steep canyons where condors live, the experience of encountering a wild condor is unforgettable, said Reed Smith, a bird watcher from Oxnard. He recently came upon one near Mt. Pinos, north of Ojai.

“Have you ever seen a [military] C-5 cargo plane? Condors are like the C-5s of birds,” Smith said. “It’s awesome to see something that large moving so fast. I was on a cliff, and a female rode a thermal right up the face of the cliff not 30 feet in front of me. I was amazed. To me, it was hard to understand the need to preserve the species until I experienced it. After that, there was no question.”

The future for condors, however, may reside far from Southern California. Even as the birds are coming back, federal wildlife officials are deliberately moving them away from urban centers. California may be the condor’s historical home, but development is fouling their nest.

‘These mountain ridges in California have historically been good flight routes and they still are, only today the ridges are covered in houses,” Mesta said. “Fifty years ago there was nothing there. It was condor country. Now people are there.”

Fourteen condors have been released in northern Arizona since 1996. In mid-January, six birds are tentatively scheduled for release at the 100,000-acre Wind Wolves Preserve, near Maricopa in Kern County. The Fish & Wildlife Service has asked the Turner Endangered Species Fund for permission to release condors at two sprawling ranches in southern New Mexico, owned by CNN magnate Ted Turner.

Negotiations are underway with Mexican officials to transplant condors to Baja California. In Northern California, Mesta said the condor recovery team is looking at a potential release site in the forests east of Red Bluff in Tehama County.

“You can just watch the release sites moving away from the Los Angeles area,” Garrett said.

Mesta defends the strategy on the grounds that condors were once a transcontinental species. “To be successful, we’re going to have to put a lot of birds out over a very wide area,” Mesta said.

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Condor Comeback

California condors are rebounding after nearly becoming extinct 16 years ago. Record numbers of juveniles are being bred in captivity and released, more are surviving outdoors and some appear ready to mate in the wild. Condors remain the most imperiled bird in the nation, but scientists are increasingly optimistic about their chances for recovery.