Colombian condor repopulation program gets technology upgrade

Colombian condor repopulation program gets technology upgrade
12 November 2014 Wednesday 18:12


Their wings spanning 10 feet or additional as they glide serenely above Colombia's Andes, condors are majestic physical specimens. They have been vital symbols here since pre-colonial occasions, when indigenous tribes saw them as messengers of the gods and harbingers of excellent fortune.

Essentially an oversized vulture, condors are national symbols in Colombia and also Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, largely simply because of the mystical significance attached to them by South American native populations. Less recognized here, but increasingly essential, is the part they play in the environment.

"The singularity of condors as a species has a great deal to do with their size, that they reside for up to 70 years and since they symbolize the Andes, nesting in altitudes of 12,000 feet or a lot more," mentioned Fausto Saenz, a 34-year-old biologist who soon will earn the initially doctorate awarded in condor ecology at a Bogota university. "But they also retain the ecology clean."

Like their relatives in California, condor populations in Colombia have been decimated in recent decades. The birds have fallen victim to higher voltage power lines, makers of homeopathic medicines and misguided farmers and peasants who poison or shoot them, pondering the birds prey on live animals. (In truth, condors eat only carrion.)

Their declining numbers prompted the San Diego Zoo in 1989 to begin a system of releasing U.S.-bred condors in the Colombian wild to hold the birds from becoming extinct. Operating with Colombian biologists, the zoo so far has released 71 condors in seven paramos, the high altitude Andean ecosystems that are the birds' all-natural habitat.
The condor program, which is one of the San Diego Zoo's signature conservation efforts and element of its mission to help endangered species in far-flung regions of the world, has been applauded here for focusing consideration on a exclusive and threatened species.

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