Posted on Jul 20, 2023
Critically Endangered, but Not Shy: Camera Spots Bunch of Condors Just Hanging Out | KQED
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Posted 11 mo ago
Responses: 2
PO1 William "Chip" Nagel I would love to see condors soaring! Hey, Mr. & Mrs. Condor, come to my place. I have plenty of carnage I can feed you from my taxidermy projects. You wouldn't have to search for food at all here!
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Despite the overall success of the program to date, it’s far too early to assume the California condor has been saved. In late 2020, the Fish and Wildlife Service reported that 309 free-flying condors had died since releases began in 1992 (PDF).
The cause of death is listed for 213 of those birds, and it’s a catalog of all the many ways our world remains hostile to fragile life: 11 condors were shot, 19 more ran afoul of power lines, 9 died in a Monterey County wildfire. More than half, 107, died of lead poisoning, generally assumed to be the result of eating dead game contaminated by lead bullets.
Climate change will also inevitably present challenging odds for condors’ long-term survival. And that’s not all: Federal officials are currently racing to test a vaccine against an unusually deadly strain of avian influenza that has spread through both wild and domestic flocks of many species of birds in California over the past year or so. The virus has already killed more than a dozen California condors.
So the condor’s future? Yes, uncertain.
Its present? We’re still checking on the view from Blue Mountain, and we’re still amazed at the enormous feathered apparitions that’ve shown up on camera."
..."Despite the overall success of the program to date, it’s far too early to assume the California condor has been saved. In late 2020, the Fish and Wildlife Service reported that 309 free-flying condors had died since releases began in 1992 (PDF).
The cause of death is listed for 213 of those birds, and it’s a catalog of all the many ways our world remains hostile to fragile life: 11 condors were shot, 19 more ran afoul of power lines, 9 died in a Monterey County wildfire. More than half, 107, died of lead poisoning, generally assumed to be the result of eating dead game contaminated by lead bullets.
Climate change will also inevitably present challenging odds for condors’ long-term survival. And that’s not all: Federal officials are currently racing to test a vaccine against an unusually deadly strain of avian influenza that has spread through both wild and domestic flocks of many species of birds in California over the past year or so. The virus has already killed more than a dozen California condors.
So the condor’s future? Yes, uncertain.
Its present? We’re still checking on the view from Blue Mountain, and we’re still amazed at the enormous feathered apparitions that’ve shown up on camera."
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