Critically Endangered: The Californian Condor

Reminiscent of a vulture, the California condor is the largest North-American land bird with a very limited area that it inhabits, with populations ranging between the Grand Canyon area, Zion national park, coastal mountains of central and southern California and northern Baja California. It is also one of the world’s longest living birds, as it can reach ages up to 60 years old in the wild.

Despite this longevity, the Californian Condor population declined drastically in the 20^th century thanks to poaching, lead poisoning and habitat destruction – this decline reached such a severe point that eventually a conservation plan was put into place that culminated with the capture of the 22 surviving wild condors that were put into breeding programs to try and reverse the damage that has made the Californian Condor one of the rarest bird species in the world; as of December 2011 there were only 390 in existence, with 210 of these in the wild.

The California condor has played an extensive and important role within the Native American culture. With a differing role for each tribe, it has mythological and ritualistic importance that has led to it being revered and hated, seen as a good luck charm or portent of bad fortune. Whilst this would appear to be a good thing in some cases, both options have often led to the condor being killed, either to fend off bad luck or to bring good luck to a tribe. It is believed that this superstition gradually helped the slow decline of the condor.

The low birth rates and mating habits of the condor have not helped with the repopulating attempts that have been made, as the California condor mates for life and only produce eggs every other spring. Scientists have managed to increase the birth rates in some cases by taking eggs away from the condor, which often ‘double-clutch’ (lay a replacement egg) when the first egg is lost, eaten or stolen. This egg that is removed from the nest can then be hand reared with a puppet and help increase the population further, whilst there has been no loss in the wild.

Conservation efforts and breeding programs are slowly starting to see an increase in the condor numbers across the Americas and hopefully, given time, we will see the Californian condor expand across the continent and flourish with new populations. Until that point, we can only hope that breeding efforts continue to prove successful and the wild populations grow strongly in the face of more and more land development that adds dangers of power lines and a lack of prey species to feed on. The California condor is no longer in as bad a position as it used to be in, but it will take a long time before it is out of the danger zone.