condor

The Californian condor is one of the largest and heaviest birds in the world. It can soar to great heights and glide as far as 16 km/10 mi without moving its wings.

Condors are an endangered species. They have been the victims of pesticide residues in the environment, which have led to eggshell thinning so severe that parents may crush their eggs while incubating. Poisoning from lead bullets eaten while feeding on the remains of hunters' unrecovered and field-dressed deer, or from poison intended for ground squirrels and coyotes, as well as collisions with power lines, have pushed the condor to the brink of extinction in recent years.

Name given to two species of birds in separate genera. The Andean condor Vultur gryphus, has a wingspan up to 3 m/10 ft, weighs up to 13 kg/28 lb, and can reach up to 1.2 m/3.8 ft in length. It is black, with some white on the wings and a white frill at the base of the neck. It lives in the Andes at heights of up to 4,500 m/14,760 ft, and along the South American coast, and feeds mainly on carrion. The Californian condor Gymnogyps californianus is a similar bird, with a wingspan of about 3 m/10 ft. It feeds entirely on carrion, and is on the verge of extinction.

The Californian condor lays only one egg at a time and may not breed every year. In 1994, only 89 Californian condors remained, of which only four were in the wild. It became the subject of a special conservation effort, and by July 1995 the number had increased to 104.

Nine California condors will be released in Arizona by the end of 1998. This will bring the total to 24 released since 1996 in the state, where it had been 72 years since the last condor was sighted there. The new birds will be freed on property of the US Bureau of Land Management that is on the Utah border near the Grand Canyon. The ongoing programme to return caged condors to the wild is an effort to save them from extinction.