https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=MzWptm-0ILs
One of the hottest broadcasts on the internetright now is a drama set in Ventura County. It’s the story of a widow who’s found a second chance at love, and now has a baby.
Oh, we should mention that the stars of the show are all endangered California condors. The amazing birds are the largest North American land birds, with a ten foot wing span.
They are scavengers which can live to be 60 years old.
The online show is the latest chapter in the amazing rebound of the once almost extinct birds.
Joseph Brandt is the Supervisory Wildlife Biologist for the Condor Program at the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge Complex. He says a female bird’s mate disappeared, but she found a new one, and that condor connection opened the door to a chick.
The condors aren’t officially named, but they are numbered. The female is #563, the male is #262, and the chick is #980.
The biologist says this is the latest accomplishment in the condor’s human-assisted comeback over the last few decades. The number of birds in the wild dropped to less than two dozen in the 1980’s. A captive breeding program was started, and once the numbers were high enough, biologists started re-releasing birds into the wild. Now, there’s around 500 worldwide.
The 2018 nesting season was one of the best in recent history. There were 12 nests in the Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Kern County mountains, and six of them led to chick births.
They don’t have to worry about natural predators. The biggest threat they face is a manmade one, in the form of lead bullets in carcasses abandoned by hunters. But, the biologist says they been working with hunters to ease the problem.
Brandt says the condor population is in the best shape in years.
