California condors at the Oregon Zoo’s Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation have produced 15 healthy chicks this year — the most ever in the zoo’s 23-year effort to save this critically endangered species.
Ten of the fuzzy chicks are hopping in their nest boxes at the Jonsson Center, and five have hatched under adoptive condor parents at The Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho. Condors at the Jonsson Center are also foster-rearing two chicks hatched from eggs laid at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
“We have 12 sets of condor parents tending chicks right now, which is nearly a full house,” said Nicole LaGreco, who oversees the zoo’s condor recovery efforts.
The chicks stay with their parents for at least eight months before moving to pre-release pens for about a year. Eventually, they will travel to a wild release site to join free-flying condors in California and Arizona.
Condors typically lay just one egg a year, but several birds at the Jonsson Center produced two eggs this year. After an egg is laid, keepers typically move it to an incubator for safekeeping, placing a dummy egg in the nest box until the real one is ready to hatch.
Sometimes, though, the dummy eggs are withheld, encouraging condors to lay a second time. This process, known as “double clutching,” has helped increase condor numbers and improve genetic diversity in the population since the recovery program began.
The California condor was one of the original animals included on the 1973 Endangered Species Act and is classified as critically endangered. In 1982, only 22 remained in the wild and by 1987, the last condors were brought into human care in an attempt to save the species from extinction. Thanks to recovery programs like the Oregon Zoo’s, the world’s California condor population now totals more than 600 birds, most of which are flying free.
The Oregon Zoo’s recovery efforts take place at the Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation, located in rural Clackamas County on Metro-owned open land. The remoteness of the facility minimizes the exposure of young condors to people, increasing their chances to survive and breed in the wild.
Upgrades and new equipment at the Jonsson Center have been made possible through continued support from Oregon senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, the Avangrid Foundation, and donations to the Oregon Zoo Foundation, which supports the zoo’s efforts in advancing animal well-being, species recovery work and conservation education.
More than 150 chicks have hatched at the Jonsson Center since 2003, and more than 100 Oregon Zoo-reared birds have gone out to field pens for release. Several eggs laid by Oregon Zoo condors have been placed in wild nests to hatch.
Source: Oregon Zoo