Father of California Condor Population Healthy, Flying High in the Wild

• [Photo of AC-4 in flight, one of the founding males of the California Condor Recovery Program, taken on May 25, 2016 by Ken Bohn, San Diego Zoo Global]
  

SAN DIEGO, CA: Some might say he is the father of California Condors.

AC-4, a California Condor who helped bring the endangered species back from the brink of extinction through a captive breeding program started in the 1980s, was recently given a clean bill of health and is flying high in the wild, officials with the San Diego Zoo announced this week.

Condor AC-4 spent 30 years at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park as part of the California Condor Recovery Program. It was there, in 1988, that he fathered the first captive-born chick and went on to help bring the number of California Condors in the world from 22 to 435 — more than half of which have been released into the wild in California, Arizona and Baja California, Mexico.

Of those, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park hatched 188 chicks and released more than 130 birds into their natural habitat. 

The California Condor Recovery Program is implemented by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, Ventana Wildlife Society, the Peregrine fund, zoos in the U.S. and Mexico and Mexican government agencies.

Many of those bred through the program now occupy most of their recent historic range from Monterey and San Benito counties south through Ventura County and north into the Southern Sierra Nevada.

Fun Facts

• The California Condor was featured on the state’s 2005 quarter
• Native American tribes respect the California Condor and see it as a symbol of power; In legends, they call it the "thunderbird."

As part of the ongoing effort to return them to the wild, AC-4 was among 70 of the Southern California flock to receive health checks recently from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff at the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge in Kern County.

California Condors, who prey exclusively on dead animals, were and still are subject to lead poisoning from the ammunition shells left behind by hunters — which oftentimes is fatal.

"They need to be tested for lead poisoning and we need to check their transmitters in order to make sure they have functioning units that allow us to track them out in the wild," said Joseph Brandt, a supervisory wildlife biologist for USFWS.

To conduct the checks, field biologists first trap the wild condors by leaving a carcass inside a pen. Once the bird is inside the pen, they close the door and then use a net to move it out of the pen to inspect it for injuries. Then, the bird’s feet are cleaned, and staff take a blood sample that will be used to test for lead on-site, which takes about 15 minutes to conduct.

While waiting for the results of the lead testing, staff check the state of the bird’s tracking device and will replace the transmitter, if needed. The condor is also weighed by staff during this check, as weight loss can indicate a possible health issue with the bird. 

Once the results of the lead testing are complete — and the level of lead in the blood is not high — the bird is released. If the lead level was too high, the bird would be returned to the pen and staff would prepare to transport the condor for lead-poisoning treatment at Los Angeles Zoo.

AC-4 was found to be in excellent health with very low levels of lead in his blood, San Diego Zoo officials reported.

"It is a pretty special bird because it was a part of the original wild flock back in the 1980s," Brandt said. "So this bird was a wild bird prior to condors being extirpated from the wild. ... After a couple decades we were able to release the bird back into the wild this fall. This was the first time we were able to test or to track AC-4 since he’s been released and fortunately his blood level is low — it's actually very low — and so he was able to be released back out into the wild again."

Don Sterner, animal care manager from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, was on hand May 25 to observe AC-4’s health check and was able to release him following the evaluation.

California Condors, which have an unusually long lifespan of 60 years, were listed by the USFWS as an endangered species in 1967. The population continued to decline, reaching a critical low of less than two dozen birds. 

In 1982, the breeding program was successfully established at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Today, two additional breeding centers are assisting with the recovery of the species, at the Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey and the Oregon Zoo.

In addition, condors are part of an education program that allows guests at the San Diego Zoo, the Santa Barbara Zoo, Phoenix Zoo and Mexico City’s Chapultepec Zoo to see North America’s largest bird up close.

According to the USFWS, the recovery program is now in the final phase, focusing on the creation of self-sustaining populations. 

“We are placing increased emphasis on the captive-breeding and reintroduction of California Condors to the wild and the management of that wild population,” according to the USFWS website. “These efforts combine trying to reduce the threat of lead with actively managing nesting in the wild to increase the number of wild fledged chicks.”

The USFWS says the ultimate goal of the California Condor Recovery Plan 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.