A critically endangered Southwest species once down to 22 individuals is bouncing back due to a multi-agency partnership. And now the public can see them up close, and maybe in the wild.
The California condor, North America’s largest land bird, is a black vulture with a wingspan nearly nine feet. It used to soar above the Southwest using little effort. The scavengers kept the region clean, consuming the carcasses of animals. During the last century, their numbers plummeted, and they nearly disappeared.
“When the west started to get settled we had issues with egg collecting, lead poisoning, shooting. Things that put the species in peril when they encounter human beings," said Benjamin Tuggle, Regional Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Tuggle spoke at the Phoenix Zoo discussing how federal and state agencies along with non-government agencies that have partnered to bring back condors while educating hunters and the public on efforts needed to save the birds.
“It’s not just the fish and wildlife service," Tuggle said. "It’s not just zoos, it’s not just Arizona Game and Fish or the other state fish and wildlife agencies. It’s tribes, it’s Peregrine Fund, it’s every organization that wants to contribute to the long term success to the species across this landscape.”
And the partnership is paying off. Chris Parish of The Peregrine Fund directs the field scientists who are working with condors directly. He says that condor numbers are coming back slowly.
“Today we have approximately 73 birds," Parish said. "I say approximately because there’s always hope for an untagged juvenile that was produced deep within the depths of the Grand Canyon that might show up. We’ve had 25 young produced in the wild, so a great indication that they can reproduce on their own, unaided. And the number one cause of death is lead poisoning.”
That’s from lead ammunition of hunters left behind in animal carcasses. Voluntary calls for hunters to use alternative shot, like copper, are helping. There is a 91 percent participation rate of hunters using alternative shot and packing out the entire animal. Still, it only takes one carcass with lead shot to sicken a flock of condors. When that happens, it is a race against time if scientists are even able to locate and treat the condors.
“We have biologists that go out into the field and monitor their daily activities," Parish said. "Where they’re foraging, what they are feeding upon. We trap the birds, change transmitters, give them a general health check and then we take a blood sample to test their blood lead levels. We’re able to analyze that in the field because if they are high, and we catch them in time we can treat them for lead poisoning.”
Beyond lead, condors are quite hearty birds. Their digestive systems are highly acidic. As a scavenger, condors need the acid to break down tough parts of a left behind carcass, including bones, and to kill diseases and bacteria present with rotting meat. And they evolved bald heads to easily clean off the entrails of their meal.
At the zoo, two full-grown young males share a spacious enclosure. John Sills with the zoo admits it isn’t quite the vast landscape of the Southwest, but even with the visitors and noise, the birds seem quite at home.
“We see no stress in these two birds and that’s why they’re here, because they are so habituated to people," Sills said. "They like being around people because you see how big their exhibit is, they spend most of their time at the front where they can see everybody.”
I’m led in the enclosure by keeper Lisa Murphy. She hides rats and rabbit around the exhibit, creating puzzles to keep the highly intelligent birds entertained. However, they try to show off a little dominance over one another by disrupting and stealing each others meals.
"[These] guys are at the age where they could become a major problem and since they are going to live more than 50 years, we don’t want to encourage them to...,” Murphy stops as the curious bird picks at the rake she keeps between the condor and I.
“You know, they’re not allowed to chew on the rake or do anything cutesy like that because that’s just the first step in becoming a major aggressive player” Murphy said.
Back in the wild, the condor’s home range has expanded to about a 70 mile radius ranging from southern Utah’s Zion National Park to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The Vermilion Cliffs south of the Utah border is a major condor release and reintroduction point.
Though it could be many years from now, we may be on track to see California condors once again glide above the Southwest, scouring to see what the desert has left behind.
California condor sounds courtesy of Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
