Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Good news everyone; it appears that the endangered California Condors are breeding in Mexico for the first time in 75 years. Recently, a Condor egg was found in an abandoned eagle nest in Sierra San Pedro de Martir National Park in Baja California, Mexico.

"This is a momentous occasion," said Mike Wallace of the Zoological Society of San Diego's center for Conservation and Research for Endangered Species. "We're all excited."

Mike Wallace climbed up to the nest to take photographs and measurements of the egg, and he candled it by shining a bright light through the shell, and determined that the egg was between 45 and 50 days old. Condors incubate their eggs for 57 days, so their chick is ready to hatch soon. While it is possible that the egg was dead, Wallace said he did not smell any sulfur and he noted that the parent condors were still tending to it.

"We are all sitting on pins and needles waiting to see where the situation is going," said Wallace.

The California Condor is a species of vulture, that relies on vision to find carrion on which it feeds. The bird's numbers dwindled in response to the decline of wild animal populations, the use of poison to kill California's grizzly bears in the 1800s, and the use of lead shot by hunters. Hunting, egg collecting and power cables were also blamed for devastating the bird's population.By the 1980s, only 22 California condors remained on the west coast, and the last documented sighting in Mexico was in the 1930s.

Several organizations have been captive-breeding the condor as part of the Condor Recovery Program, which was founded in 1982 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Among them are several Mexican groups, the San Diego, Los Angeles and Oregon Zoos, and the Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey. The condor has recovered to a worldwide total of about 280 birds. More than 100 birds have been released in California, Nevada and Utah. Additionally, in conjunction with the Mexican government, biologists reintroduced captive-bred birds to Mexico in 2002.

Condors don't reproduce until they are several years old, Wallace said. The 7-year-old female that laid the egg in Mexico, known as Condor 217, was born at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Cited story.

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