credit – Jamie Pham / LA Zoo

The Los Angeles Zoo is capping off its 2024 California condor breeding season with a record-breaking 17 chicks hatched all of which will be candidates for release into the wild as part of the California Condor Recovery Program (CCRP).

The 17th and final chick of the season hatched in June and is thriving. The previous record of 15 California condor chicks hatched at the LA Zoo was set in 1997.

Photographers were at pains to capture this famously ugly bird during the miracle of birth, and the photos were announced in the LA Times as “Ugly-cute baby photos.”

“Our condor team has raised the bar once again in the collaborative effort to save America’s largest flying bird from extinction,” said Rose Legato, Curator of Birds at the Los Angeles Zoo.

“What we are seeing now are the benefits of new breeding and rearing techniques developed and implemented by our team which put two or three condor chicks together with adult surrogate condors to be raised. The result is more condor chicks in the program and ultimately more condors in the wild.”

In 2017, the LA Zoo pioneered a new breeding technique where animal care staff placed two condor chicks with a surrogate condor to raise them. Until that time, no other zoo or CCRP partner had attempted this process. This year, the zoo’s condor team implemented a technique allowing three chicks to be raised at the same time by a female—another first for the program.

This triple brooding process maximizes the zoo’s ability to raise condors without human interaction which helps the birds easily adjust when released to the wild. It also enables breeding pairs to produce more than one viable egg in a season.

One of the condor chicks – credit, LA Zoo released.

For the record-breaking 2024 breeding season, LA Zoo animal care staff successfully reared three single chicks, eight chicks in double brood situations, and six chicks in triple broods with adult mentors.

The condor breeding program at the zoo started all the way back in 1967 when a single individual named Topa Topa came to the zoo as a malnourished fledgling rescued in the wild. In 1983 there were only 22 California condors remaining on the planet, so the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission agreed to create a captive breeding program for the species, which the LA Zoo entered as a founding partner.

As of December 2023, there are 561 California condors in the world, of which 344 are living in the wild. The number fluctuates daily due to many outside influences.

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The California condor is the largest land bird in North America with wings spanning almost 10 feet. Adult condors stand at around three feet tall and weigh 17 to 25 pounds. The species can soar to heights of 15,000 feet and may travel up to 150 miles a day. Condors find their food mostly by their keen eyesight.

Like vultures and other scavengers, condors are part of nature’s cleaning crew, feeding on the carcasses of large mammals including deer, cattle, and marine mammals such as whales and seals.

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The LA Times reports that the chicks will remain in the zoo’s care for the next year and a half. After, as has been done before with 250 chicks born at the zoo over the years, they will be evaluated for their potential to be released back into the wild.

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