California Condors
BY EDUARDO
The world's most endangered animal has a total population of 75. The California Condor has had a lot less than this and survived. The California Condor is one of the largest flying birds with a 9.8 foot wingspan, is a vulture, and part of the Cathartidae family. This bird will scavenge for food and in doing so play their part in the ecosystem, has an interesting history, and almost went extinct.
Once every several days the Condor will go feeding, what they feed on helps them play their part in the ecosystem. They are scavengers, so they will fly up to 15,000 thousand feet (5.51 times taller than the Burj khalifa) and search for food. Sometimes they cover 200 miles in a single day searching.The Condor will fly 30-40 miles per hour and will complete a circle in twelve-fourteen seconds. The bird will search from this height for its food which is carrion the flesh of dead animals anywhere from rabbits to whales. Once it sees its food it will circle down and eat. It will store two-three pounds of flesh in its crop (part of their esophagus) to help the food last longer. The way this affects the ecosystem is because the Condor, a scavenger, eats all the carrion (dead animals) who would become a breeding ground for bacteria which would expedite the spreading of disease.
The California Condor has an interesting history. It started forty thousand years ago in the late pleistocene era. In this era there were large land mammals roaming the continent so the Condor had a reliable food source. At this time The Condor was found all over North America not just the western states and Northwest Mexico. The Condors continued to survive through the years, then the humans came. One day in 1806 October 28 Lewis and Clark while on their expedition encountered the bird and killed it. Clark’s journal read “Rubin Feilds Killed A Buzzard of the Large kind.” Clark was the first human to write about the bird but not the first human to encounter the bird because the natives had, and believed the bird was sacred. Lewis and Clark only killed one bird but when people came to settle in the west they killed lots more by shooting, poisoning, capturing, or collecting their eggs.
The history of the bird stretches over 40,000 years but almost came to an abrupt end in 1982 when the Condor population was only 22 Birds. The reason the population went so low is because human caused habitat loss, lead poisoning and poaching. Conservationists including the U.S Fish and wildlife service decided it was time to do something about the situation, so they captured every Condor and started a conservation program. This program The California Condor Recovery Program consisted of removing the chicks from their nests then moving them to the San Diego Zoo to mature. The adults would be placed in a facility to be away from danger and could reproduce, at one point every California Condor on Earth was in captivity. From 1987 to 1992 there were no California Condors flying free. It took so long for the program to succeed because the Condor will only lay one egg every nest attempt and they may not attempt every year. This program’s greatest achievement came when the first baby chick was born in the wild in Arizona 2003. The program still does work today trying to establish a self-sustaining population of Condors.
As of 2022 there are 561 Condors. Some still in captivity and others living free. Each one of these Condors scavenges for food while playing their part in the ecosystem, has an interesting history, and they are the offspring of the Condors that almost went extinct.
“California Condor Overview, All about Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.” Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/California_Condor/overview. Accessed 20 Mar. 2025.
“California Condor.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 28 Feb. 2025, www.britannica.com/animal/California-condor.
