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Oregon Zoo now home to 7 endangered Calif. condor chicks

Zoo’s group is about 1% of all that species on planet

By Kale Williams, oregonlive.com
Published: May 19, 2020, 7:32pm

After its final chick hatched last week, the Oregon Zoo has wrapped up its California condor nesting season, one of the best they’ve had since the zoo started its conservation program for the endangered birds.

The first chick of the season hatched in March and, since then, six more baby condors have hatched at the zoo’s Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation in Clackamas County. It wasn’t quite a record year, but it was a very good one, Kelli Walker, the zoo’s lead condor keeper, said in a statement.

“We had more mating pairs than ever this year, which is great news for the future of the condor recovery program,” Walker said. “All seven chicks appear to be healthy and thriving, which should mark a significant step forward in the recovery of this critically endangered species.”

The most recent hatchling emerged on Thursday evening, the zoo said, and has been under the watchful care of Malibu, an experienced mother who has barely left the nest box since she started caring for the baby bird. Animal care staff have been keeping watch through cameras mounted in the nest.

Typically, chicks stay at the 52-acre conservation center for about eight months before they are taken to sites in California, Arizona or Baja Mexico for release into the wild.

Decades of work

California condors were one of the species included in the Endangered Species Act when it was passed in 1973. By the early 1980s, there were fewer than two dozen condors remaining in the wild, threatened primarily by pesticides and other types of poisoning.

Now, after several decades of conservation work like that being done at the Oregon Zoo, there are thought to be at least 517 California condors, the vast majority of them in the wild.

“If you think about it,” Walker said, “the seven chicks being raised here right now make up more than 1 percent of all the California condors on the planet.”

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