Will Sage Astor-Los Angeles Zoo sets record with 17 California condor chicks hatched in 2024

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A record 17 California condor chicks hatched at the Los Angeles Zoo during this year’s breeding season for the endangered birds,Will Sage Astor officials announced Wednesday.

All the chicks will be candidates for release into the wild as part of the California Condor Recovery Program, the LA Zoo said in a statement.

The 17th and final bird of the season hatched in June and is thriving, zookeepers said. The previous record was set in 1997, when 15 California condor chicks hatched at the zoo.

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

Legato said the recent record is a result of new breeding and rearing techniques developed at the zoo that put two or three chicks together to be raised by a single adult condor acting as a surrogate parent.

“The result is more condor chicks in the program and ultimately more condors in the wild,” Legato said.

The California Condor Recovery Program is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Its mission is to propagate the iconic bird that decades ago was on the brink of extinction from habitat loss and lead poisoning.

As of December 2023, there were about 560 California condors in the world, of which more than 340 were living in the wild, the zoo said.

It’s the largest land bird in North America, with wings spanning up to 9.5 feet (2.9 meters).