Return of the California Condor to Baja and Beyond

Before a condor can be released, we conduct research to produce successful release candidates, including identification of behavioral predictors of success following release that help refine release strategies. Genetic tools are used to determine sex, confirm parentage, and identify individuals. We are experimenting with “aversive conditioning” to try to teach condors not feed their chicks microtrash, which causes gastrointestinal damage and is a major obstacle to reintroduction success in California. 

In the field, we study ranging, habitat use, foraging, social groupings and behavior, and environmental carrying capacity. For the first time, the recovery program has fitted 100% of the condors with GPS satellite tags are now able to track the detailed movements of every bird in the population.

In 2007 we hired a postdoctoral research fellow, specializing in spatial ecology. We have installed weather stations in areas used by condors to track climatic conditions. Wind and temperature data are combined with GPS spatial data to understand the importance of prevailing wind conditions when selecting reintroduction sites and predicting where birds will fly.

The conservation applications are significant because we will be able to predict which food, nesting, and roosting resources will be found and used and which potential threats they may encounter. Through our conservation science program, we will obtain critical information on how released condors develop their ranging patterns, utilize their habitat, and find food and how social interactions facilitate these processes and enable them to adapt to life in the wild. These data will also allow us to identify and monitor key threats to condor survival.

Our goal is to establish 20 breeding pairs in the wild of Baja, as well as producing condors for release in California and Arizona. These birds will be independent from human support, finding their own sources of food, and reproducing independently. In terms of outreach and capacity building, we have translated and distributed more than 2,000 pamphlets to the local Baja community, as well as written and distributed a bilingual booklet, Condors Come Home. We are developing an important new partnership with Wildcoast/Costasalvaje, which specializes and excels in such public outreach campaigns in Baja.

Given the condors’ flight capabilities, it is anticipated that reintroduced condors will ultimately range from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of California, as well as northward across the U.S. border, providing an important link to existing reintroduced populations in California.