Slow breeding combined with high mortality rates in California condors pose challenges for the endangered bird’s recovery in the wild. Last year was the first time in decades that more young condors survived to flying age than the number of adult condors that died in the wild. Arizona Public Radio’s Justin Regan reports.
It can take up to 8 years for a condor to reach sexual maturity, and a pair will typically produce one egg every other year. Since the birds were reintroduced to the Southwest in the early 1990s, dead adults were not being replaced by wild young birds. But in 2015 that changed with 14 condors successfully leaving the nest while 12 adults died.
“It’s a great sign, but we know we have a long way to recovery. Should it be a trend and we have more birds being produced in the wild than die each year, then obviously that is going to take us to our goal, and that’s a self-sustaining population,” said Chris Parish, the director of the California Condor Recovery Program.
He also says the number of condor deaths from lead poisoning, the birds’ biggest killer, dropped last year. Condors will eat the remains of hunted animals and ingest lead fragments from bullets.
There are currently 268 wild condors living in California, Utah, Baja California and Northern Arizona.
