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S. American Group Working To Save Condor Population

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By MONTE REEL, The Washington Post

Published: December 30, 2007

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - The conservationists tend to get a little tense when they approach Egg 54, which sits alone on a metal tray inside an incubator, absorbing warm air like some sort of fragile, slow-baked potato.

The egg might contain an Andean condor, which is why everyone who comes near it wears cotton face masks and avoids sudden movements, standing stiff with caution.

An endangered species, condors cannot reproduce until they are 8 to 12 years old.

For the past decade, a team of scientists and volunteers at the Buenos Aires Zoo has been raising condor hatchlings and releasing them throughout South America, helping restore populations of the bird in places where it had long been considered extinct.

"When you talk to some of the older people in the small, rural communities, they remember seeing condors when they were children," said Luis Jacome, director of the Andean Condor Conservation Project. "Now they're seeing them again."

As its name implies, Egg 54 is one of several dozen that the program has tried to incubate at its headquarters in the Buenos Aires Zoo. Since 1997, 18 of the eggs have hatched condor chicks. Along with nearly 60 adult condors that program members have rescued and nursed back to health, the grown birds now fly in South American skies.

Condor populations declined for decades throughout South America mainly because of hunting by farmers, many of whom mistakenly believed the condor to be a predatory bird.

Estimating populations of condors is extremely difficult because their nests are usually in mountainous locations that are difficult to reach.

In 1965, the condor was declared extinct in Venezuela, and it was believed to be on track for the same fate in Ecuador and Colombia, Jacome said. On the coast of Argentina - the country that historically had the largest condor population - the bird had also disappeared.

But today, about a dozen condors live in Venezuela, and a total of perhaps 100 soar in the skies of Colombia and Ecuador. Quite a few nest near Argentina's coast. Chile and Argentina probably have the most condors, though no precise population estimates exist, Jacome said.

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