The Dramatic Story of the California Condor
“10,000 years ago in the Pleistocene era, the California Condor roamed free & proud among other iconic ice age species such as the saber tooth cat, giant sloths, & mastodons. The California condor however was one of the few super-sized species that could boast of making it through the ice age.
For thousands of years more, the California Condor continued to claim its throne as king of the skies, as it watched homo sapiens migrate south... The condor & these early human settlers of North America lived side-by-side for thousands of additional years. Then...came the modern age...
By 1987...only 22 were left in the wild...all 22 California Condors were captured by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Department & put in captivity. The goal was to breed the remaining animals & create a viable & genetically diverse population to release back into the wild.
...Michael Mace, a Curator of Birds for the San Diego Zoo described...how biologists had to rely on a method called Conservation Innovation...
...slowly the population began to rebound. In 2008, the Condor Recovery Program reached a happy milestone: more California condors were flying free in the wild than were in captivity for the first time since the program began in 1987.
Amazingly, the results of all of this dedicated work & ingenuity...represent one of the most dramatic turn-arounds ever for a critically endangered species – & the California Condor is again King of the Skies across the American West.”
Cherise Udell
January 12, 2016
care2.com
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