A brand new technique of rearing California condors on the Los Angeles Zoo has resulted in a record-breaking 17 chicks hatched this 12 months, the zoo introduced Wednesday.
The entire new child birds will ultimately be thought of for launch into the wild underneath the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s California Condor Restoration Program, a zoo spokesperson mentioned.
“What we’re seeing now are the advantages of latest breeding and rearing methods developed and carried out by our group,” zoo chook curator Rose Legato mentioned in an announcement. “The result’s extra condor chicks in this system and in the end extra condors within the wild.”
Breeding pairs of California condors dwell on the zoo in buildings the workers “affectionately calls condor-miniums,” spokesperson Carl Myers mentioned. When a feminine produces a fertilized egg, the egg is moved to an incubator. As its hatching approaches, the egg is positioned with a surrogate dad or mum able to rearing the chick.
California condor eggs are cared for at L.A. Zoo. The animal is critically endangered.
(Jamie Pham / L.A. Zoo)
This bumper 12 months of condor infants is the results of a modification to a rearing approach pioneered on the L.A. Zoo.
Beforehand, when the zoo discovered itself with extra fertilized eggs than surrogate adults obtainable, workers raised the younger birds by hand. However condors raised by human caretakers have a decrease likelihood of survival within the wild (therefore the condor puppets that zookeepers used within the Nineteen Eighties to forestall younger birds from imprinting on human caregivers).
In 2017, the L.A. Zoo experimented with giving an grownup chook named Anyapa two eggs as an alternative of 1. The gamble was a hit. Each birds have been efficiently launched into the wild.
Confronted with a lot of eggs this 12 months, “the keepers thought, ‘Let’s attempt three,’” Myers mentioned. “And it labored.”
The zoo’s condor mentors this season in the end have been in a position to rear three single chicks, eight chicks in double broods and 6 chicks in triple broods. The earlier document variety of 15 chicks was set in 1997.
Condor consultants applauded the brand new technique.
“Condors are social animals and we’re studying extra yearly about their social dynamics. So I’m not shocked that these chick-rearing methods are paying off,” mentioned Jonathan C. Corridor, a wildlife ecologist at Jap Michigan College. “I might anticipate chicks raised this strategy to do properly within the wild.”
The biggest land chook in North America with a formidable wingspan as much as 9½ ft, the California condor might as soon as be discovered throughout the continent. Its numbers started to say no within the nineteenth century as human settlers with fashionable weapons moved into the birds’ territory. The scavenger species was each hunted by people and inadvertently poisoned by lead bullet fragments embedded in carcasses it ate. The federal authorities listed the birds as an endangered species in 1967.
A condor, one in every of a record-breaking 17 on the zoo, makes its approach out of its shell.
(Jamie Pham / L.A. Zoo)
When the California Condor Restoration Program started 4 many years in the past, there have been solely 22 California condors left on Earth. As of December, there have been 561 dwelling people, with 344 of these within the wild. Regardless of this system’s success in elevating the inhabitants’s numbers, the species stays critically endangered.
Along with the continued menace of lead poisoning, the massive birds are additionally in danger from different toxins. One 2022 examine discovered greater than 40 DDT-related compounds within the blood of untamed California condors — chemical substances that had made their approach from contaminated marine life to the highest of the meals chain.
“Regardless of our success in returning condors to the wild, free-flying condors proceed to face many obstacles with lead poisoning being the No. 1 explanation for mortality,” mentioned Joanna Gilkeson, spokesperson for Fish and Wildlife’s Pacific Southwest Area. “Modern methods, like these the L.A. Zoo is implementing, assist us to supply extra wholesome chicks and proceed releasing condors into the wild.”
The chicks will stay within the zoo’s look after the following 12 months and a half earlier than they’re evaluated for potential launch to the wild. To this point, the zoo has contributed 250 condor chicks to Fish and Wildlife’s program, a few of which the company has redeployed to different zoos as a part of its conservation efforts.
In a paper revealed earlier this 12 months, a group of researchers discovered that birds born in captivity have barely decrease survival charges for his or her first 12 months or two however then have equally profitable outcomes to wild-hatched birds.
“As a result of condors reproduce slowly, releases of captive-bred birds are important to the restoration of the species, particularly in gentle of ongoing losses because of lead-related mortality,” mentioned Victoria Bakker, a quantitative ecologist at Montana State College and lead creator of the paper. “The group on the L.A. Zoo needs to be acknowledged for his or her revolutionary and essential contributions to condor restoration.”
