Volunteering at the L.A. Zoo: California Condor Outreach

On April 3, 2022, Los Angeles Birders-Students joined a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist for California Condor Outreach at the L.A. Zoo. There, students including Bella, Thomas, and myself talked to hundreds of people about the amazing California Condor. Our parents and my younger sister participated in the outreach as well.

(Quite) a Bit About California Condors

California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) are an endangered New World vulture. This species used to inhabit much of North America, including the Pacific Coast. By the late 1900s, the condor’s range became limited to just the mountains of Southern California. Range became limited as people shot, poisoned, and captured condors. People also reduced their food supply (elk, antelope, etc.) and collected condor eggs. Today, there are condor populations in both Central and Southern California as well as in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Baja California thanks to the tireless work of biologists.

California Condors are truly incredible birds! They have a wingspan of 9.5 feet, making them the largest land bird in North America. To help you comprehend the size of condors, consider this: if a California Condor were placed in a school bus, their wings would extend out the windows! That’s insane (there, I said it for you)! Condors have a lifespan of over 60 years and don’t reach sexual maturity until 6 years old. Adults have a pink head and gray bills while immatures have a black head and dark colored bill.

California Condors are scavengers, meaning instead of killing their own prey, they feed on carrion (dead animals). Condors can store up to 3 pounds of meat in their crop at any given time and only need to eat every 2-3 days. California Condors have fantastic eye sight, but a bad sense of smell. It’s thought that they follow Turkey Vultures and Common Ravens in order to locate carrion.
Thanks to their huge wingspans, condors are extremely energy efficient. They have low metabolic rates and are able to ride on thermals. Because they are able to travel hundreds of feet into the air rather quickly, condors need to be able to thermoregulate efficiently. Their bald head helps condors regulate their temperature as well as their capability of peeing on their legs to cool down, called urohidrosis. They will also projectile vomit acid out of territorial aggression.
In SoCal, condors nest in small cavities in mountain cliffs. Along the coast, they are known to nest in redwood trees. Condors lay a single egg every other year and the chick will stay with their parents for about 1.5 years before going out on their own.

In the 1980’s only 22 individuals remained and biologists began an intensive effort to save the bird from extinction. Some reasons for the condor’s population decline was the use of DDT, a harmful pesticide that contaminates waterways and soil to this today even after its ban in 1972. Other threats include electrocution by power lines and getting hit by cars. However, the main threat to California Condors is lead poisoning.

Lead ammunition is the only identified way that condors come into contact with lead. When hunters shoot animals with lead bullets, the lead fractures into thousands of pieces. When California condors come to eat the carrion, they consume the lead in the process. This can make them very sick as the metal accumulates in their bodies and can lead to death if left untreated.

The first law to ban the use of lead ammunition in California was in 2007 with the Ridley-Tree Condor Conservation Act, which created “non-lead zones” within condor range. The second law, Assembly Bill 711, was passed in 2013 making lead ammunition illegal for all wildlife. Today, people are encouraged to use non-lead ammunition, namely copper, which does not shatter into thousands of pieces upon impact with an animal. While most have switched to the condor-friendly alternatives, some despise the doubled cost for copper bullets compared to lead bullets. Others believe non-lead bullets are not as effective. The laws are difficult to enforce. Even if all hunters switched to non-lead bullets, lead could still be found in the environment, either on the ground, old caresses, etc. So long as lead is in the environment, condors can still get lead poisoning.

Another threat is microtrash. Condor parents bring their chicks bits of bone and shell to supply them with calcium. Often times though, condors mistake small pieces of trash for this vital nutrient. Bottle caps (plastic and metal), cigarette butts, pieces of plastic, and more can all be found in the digestive system of condor chicks. This can lead to a variety of problems, though can ultimately end in death if not treated by biologists.

Today, there are a little over 500 California Condors in the world, about a 230% increase from what it was in the 1980’s. While this progress is without a doubt commendable, there is still a lot more to be done.

By 1987, California Condors became extinct in the wild when the last individual was brought in captivity to join the others in the captive breeding program. Many people despised the idea of a captive breeding program, believing that a condor in captivity wasn’t a condor, etc. While this method had never been used with California Condors, biologists took inspiration from the Andean Condor, one of the California Condor’s close relatives and another species at risk of extinction. The captive breeding program for California Condors was extremely successful and is likely the reason condors are not extinct today. Biologists collected the eggs of the once wild condors and placed them in incubators. The parents were given a fake egg of the same size and weight of their chick’s egg. Once the chick hatched, biologists would hand feed them with puppets so as to prevent the chick from imprinting on people. The use of puppets had never been done before on any species but was met with great success. Grown up chicks were later released into the wild.
Biologists continue to raise condors in captivity at three zoo locations (L.A. Zoo, San Diego Zoo, and Santa Barbra Zoo). A few of the OG condors from the 1980s are still in the breeding program today.

Only up until recently, the lead levels of condors was being meticulously monitored by wildlife biologists. If a condor was found to have a lead level of 25 µg/dL or more, they would be brought into captivity to purge the lead through chelation therapy, an extremely stressful therapy for individuals to undergo. By comparison, humans are only allowed to have a lead level of 0 µg/dL. Lead toxocosis was a prevalent issue at this time, when condors were found to have extremely high levels of lead that was being absorbed into the body. Not all cases of lead toxocosis were able to be treated and many condors ended up dying as a result despite the extreme dedication of biologists and veterinarians. Today, the condor population is healthy enough to where biologists only look for symptoms of lead poisoning instead of taking blood samples and testing the lead level.

But, the fight for condors is far from over. Biologists continue to monitor condor nests carefully. This involves biologists rappelling down sheer cliffs to enter condor nests once every 30 days for 120 days. There, they will check the fertility of eggs, asses the health of the chick, remove any microtrash from the nest, and tag the fledgling with a wing tag at 120 days.

Wing tags are tags with a unique number and a radio transmitter sewn in used to track individual condors and their movements. Every California Condor that has ever hatched, alive or decreased today, has a wing tag number. These tags give a GPS location of the bird every hour. If you find a California Condor (lucky you), you can see if Condor Spotter has the tag included. There, you can find the age of the condor, their parents and siblings, where they hatched, and more.

What can you do to help condors?

• Encourage hunters to switch to non-lead alternatives if they haven’t already
• Throw trash away correctly to prevent microtrash from collecting in the environment 
  • Volunteer at trash clean-ups!
• Drive safely to protect wildlife, animals that become roadkill attract scavengers who can then get hit by cars themselves
• Report observations of interesting/rare species or behaviors to land management agencies
• Report poaching (ie. Illegal shooting or trespassing) to land management agencies
• Protect open landscapes that condors use to feed, fly, and nest
• Volunteer for condor recovery and awareness! 😉

Suggested Resources

• The Condor’s Shadow (a must watch documentary!!)
• Condor Spotter (ID individual condors!)
• National Park Service- California Condor multimedia from Pinnacles National Park
• National Park Service- Get Involved [With Condors]
• Santa Barbra Zoo- California Condors (info on wing tags, etc.)
• The Cornell Lab of Ornithology- California Condor nest entry
• Created by Morgan:

Activity: Measure a Condor’s Wingspan!

The California Condor has an incredible wingspan of 9.5 feet, but that’s just a number! Measure out and cut 9.5 feet of ribbon. Have one person hold one end while another walks back. Yup, keep walking, keep walking. There you go, nine and a half feet, also known as the wingspan of a California Condor!

Takeaway

We had a fantastic time teaching others about California Condors and the importance of protecting them! While we didn’t share all the info I give you above to the people who stopped by, we hope to have at least left them wondering about California Condors: a magnificent bird in need of extreme protection.