A record - interrupt 17 California condor chicks have been hatched at Los Angeles Zoo in a huge boon for the critically queer species . All of the bird will be candidates for release into the wilderness as part of the wide California Condor Recovery Program .
The feat was made potential by a novel breeding proficiency developed at LA Zoo in 2017 where animate being care stave placed two condor chicks with a foster mentor condor to raise the bird .
This year , three chicks were raised at the same sentence by foster condors to maximize the menagerie ’s ability to raise condor . To further boost the bird ’s reproductive ability , the eggs are necessitate away from the parents for hokey incubation , enabling breeding twosome to grow more than one viable egg in a season .
California condors are the largest North American land bird.Image credit:NPS/Kurt Moses (Public Domain)
California condor ( Gymnogyps californianus ) are a New World piranha and the largest land razz in North America with a wingspan of 2.8 cadence ( 9.5 feet ) . Fascinatingly , there have been report instance of themasexually reproducingthroughparthenogenesiswithout the input of a male .
They ’re known as nature ’s clean - up work party ; scavengers that only use up drained animals found on the landscape . They have fantastically secure stomach juices that help to condense chassis , os , and pelt , and help them resist disease . Their role as scavengers isimportant to the broader ecosystemas they assist to forestall disease outbreaks and unloose nutrient back into the surround .
The species came unbelievably tight to extinction in the 1980s . Just 22 California condors stay on the satellite in 1983 and the mintage was declared extinct in the state of nature in 1987 .
Habitat loss played a theatrical role in their demise , but a direct component was lead toxic condition from spent ammo . Ingestion of human trash was another major job , especially among the tiddler that are feast by their parents .
In a last - ditch attempt to save the species , the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission launched a captive raising programme with the help of LA Zoo – and it has prove fairly successful . According to the latest count , there are 561 California condors in the world , 344 of which are subsist in the wild .
“ The L.A. Zoo has been an integral pardner in the recuperation of the iconic California condor since the inception of the program in the 1980s when the metal money was at the threshold of extinction , ” Denise M. Verret , Los Angeles Zoo CEO / Zoo Director , said in astatement .
“ It is the cornerstone of the Zoo ’s delegation to save wildlife and an important case of a successful preservation partnership between menagerie , government agencies , endemic peoples , and secret organisation . We are proud to be able to make such a meaning contribution to the preservation of nature , ” said Verret .
The achiever has n’t come crummy , though . Over $ 35 millionhas been pass over the preceding two decades on the California Condor recovery project , making it one of the most expensive mintage conservation project in US history .
