SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Lead Remains Condors' Major Obstacle
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)
The San Diego Zoo made conservation history 30 years ago by adopting a California condor chick and raising it at what is now the Safari Park. The known
free-ranging population at the time was 22 birds--a number that fell to zero in 1987 when the last wild condor was taken captive in hopes of preventing
extinction.
It was the first time since the Pleistocene era that no condor soared over North America. Today, pioneering work has boosted the wild condor population to
210 across the Southwest and Baja California, and decades of research have advanced techniques for boosting avian recovery initiatives more broadly.
But human-caused threats pose the major obstacle for wild condors to survive without costly intervention by wildlife agencies and nonprofit groups,
according to a new journal paper by scientists at the zoo's Institute for Conservation Research and elsewhere. It shows that lead poisoning and eating
garbage such as bottle caps are the biggest dangers to the iconic, baldheaded birds.
Read more...
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