Thanks to a lead ammo ban, habitat enhancements, and power pole modifications, reintroduced California condors continue to achieve new levels of population restoration success. This year, for the first time in 32 years, a pair of wild-born condors nested and raised a wild-born chick in Big Sur. Ventana Wildlife Society tracked condor 38 (Miracle) by her radio collar and found her with mate 74 (Nomad) and their second generation wild-born chick in a hollowed-out cavity of an old redwood tree. Mother Miracle was born in 2009 and Papa Nomad in 2010 in Big Sur.
Also this year, in the Sierra foothills of Tulare County condors are roosting for the first time in 40 years. This event is significant because it indicates California condors will move back into the Sierras. Last year, reintroduced condors were documented flying into the southern Sierras for the first time. Condors are social, sharing information about good foraging and other habitat, and perhaps “told” their friends about the roosts created at Blue Ridge National Wildlife Refuge. This fall, captive-bred condors are being released in the southernmost part of the San Joaquin Valley at the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge near Maricopa (Kern County).
Condors are scavengers that eat carrion. They will eat meat that died from natural causes or was killed. [Supervisory wildlife biologist Joseph] Brandt calls them “nature’s cleanup crew.” Activities like hunting and ranching can provide food for the birds; however, lead poisoning from consuming lead ammunition has been a prevalent cause of death for condors.
Brandt says that population modeling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has done shows lead as a primary barrier to condors from becoming self-sustaining.
Part of the work of the Condor Recovery Project includes educating and reaching out to hunters and ranchers to make areas safer for condors to repopulate.
These achievements wouldn’t be possible without California’s ban on lead ammo that took effect in the state’s condor territory in 2008. A statewide ban was passed in 2013 with phased implementation beginning in 2015. The last phase takes effect in July 1, 2018 and requires the use of non-lead ammo for all wildlife killed with a firearm everywhere in the state.
Along with this ban, condors have been supported through habitat protection across their territories, encouraging ranchers to leave downed cattle available as prey, and training captive bred chicks to avoid power lines. Besides training chicks to avoid them, adult use of power poles is discouraged through modifications that deter perching. Electrocution from power lines is a threat to many raptors.
The work of environmental toxicologist Myra Finkelstein from University of California at Santa Cruz was instrumental in passing the lead ammo ban. Although biologists knew that lead poisoning was a common cause of death for condors, the importance of lead ammo as the source was disputed. Finkelstein used chemical analysis to trace the source of lead in condors to ammunition. She also used analysis to prove the lead levels in condors by evaluating lead content in their feathers and linking it to ammo.
As a feather grows, it records the lead that the bird is exposed to: a timeline of toxicity. A full feather contains about four months of exposure history, while blood only captures the past couple weeks. By snipping bits of feather from free-flying birds and analyzing them, Finkelstein could see how the lead levels were higher, and the exposures more frequent, than researchers had realized. Then in 2012, Finkelstein and colleagues examined more than a thousand condor blood samples and painted the most comprehensive picture of the bird’s plight to date.
They saw an epidemic. A staggering one in five free-flying condors was poisoned at any given time. And half the birds had sublethal levels that would still make them sick. The lead's isotopic composition or signature cemented the link to ammunition.
Special interest groups (i.e., hunters and ranchers) tried to belittle the link to ammunition and pointed to trash and lead-based paint as possible sources. “We closed the door on that argument,” Finkelstein said.
But change doesn't happen on its own; scientists have to interpret their findings for voters and legislators, Finkelstein says. “You can’t just publish your paper. You have to go to them and say, ‘This is what it means, and this is how it’s relevant.’”
To get the lead out of condors, Finkelstein took her research results to the public. In 2013, she coauthored a letter signed by 30 scientists, doctors, and public health experts calling for the end of lead ammunition use. When a legislative bill proposed such a ban, she testified before the California Senate in its support.
The status of the condor population has changed dramatically several times. Ten thousand years ago, condors occupied much of North America. When Europeans arrived, the birds’ territory had shrunk to the Pacific coastline from British Columbia through Baja Mexico, perhaps due to lack of Pleistocene megafauna that once provided an abundant food source. The settlers saw condors feeding on dead cattle and thought they had killed the animals, not realizing they only ate carrion, and persecuted the birds. By the 1940’s, condors occupied only the southern half of California’s Pacific coast with inland San Joaquin Valley part of their foraging habitat. In 1982, only 23 California condors survived in a small area along the coast, and in 1987 all were taken into a captive breeding program.
While humans are responsible for condor declines since Europeans arrived, humans also are responsible for condor population restoration. Captive bred condors were reintroduced into the wild beginning in 1992. In 2008, more condors were flying free than were held in captivity. As of 2016, there were 276 in the wild population and 170 in captivity (the wild population includes those in California, Arizona/Utah, and Baja California, Mexico). All these condors came from those taken into captivity in 1987.
Change doesn’t happen on its own. The goal of the California Condor Recovery Program led by US Fish and Wildlife Service is to establish “two geographically distinct self-sustaining populations, each with 150 birds in the wild and at least 15 breeding pairs, with a third population of condors retained in captivity.”
With the first nest of the reintroduced captive-bred condors discovered in a redwood tree in 2006, and this year’s wild born condor parents successfully nesting in a redwood tree, another change is poised to happen. The Yurok condor reintroduction to redwood forests of the Klamath area is one step closer to reality. Their 2019 plans call for condors to be released in northwestern California (Humboldt and Del Norte counties). Condor flights to the Sierras in 2016 and roosting there this year are encouraging signs of another possible change: condors might nest again in the Sierras in cavities on rocky cliffs or in sequoia trees.
The more humans learn nature’s truths (condors don’t kill livestock) and consequences of our actions (dangers of lead ammo and power lines) the more we can promote positive change. For free-flying condors, 2008 was a turning point towards wild establishment. This year’s milestone second-generation wild-born demonstrates self-sufficiency. Behind condor recovery success are myriad achievements of humans, from the scientists who pioneered their re-introduction and the public who cooperate in ensuring habitat needs. We harassed condors to near-extinction and now are bringing them back.
Bonus video of the biggest and smallest birds in North America!
Weighing only a few grams, it would take roughly 3,000 hummingbirds to equal the average weight of one 20 pound California condor like #206 seen here in this clip. Just as California condors have several adaptations for their large size, we see different traits in hummingbirds due to their small size. One key difference is in the way that each of these birds fly - California condors are unable to rely heavily on their pectoral muscles for sustained flight, unlike hummingbirds which are able to hover and fly backwards; instead California condors rely on wind patterns for a sustained soaring-type flight, allowing them to travel great distances. (source)