Bummer - Four California Condor Chicks Die Of West Nile Virus - ENN

BOISE, Idaho — Efforts to save North America's tiny population of critically endangered California condors suffered what biologists called a minor setback last week when four 3-month-old chicks at an Idaho raptor center died of West Nile virus. Their demise leaves just eight condor hatchlings at the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, where biologists have been breeding the federally protected scavengers since 1994.

These are the first condors to die from the mosquito-borne virus at the center, a project of The Peregrine Fund. West Nile showed up in Idaho in 2003 and emerged a month ahead of schedule this year, as spring rains left pools where mosquito larvae thrive, state officials said.

Bill Heinrich, the center's species restoration manager, said the deaths aren't a devastating blow to his $1.3 million annual condor breeding program, but they're still disappointing. Consequently, the facility in 2006 will send fewer than half the 20 birds it transported last year for release at sites including near Arizona's Grand Canyon.

"Until the young are 90 days old, they're too young to vaccinate," Heinrich said. "These birds were just about ready to be vaccinated when they caught the virus." Chris Parish, the center's condor project director in Marble Canyon, Ariz., said wild condors reproduce at a rate of a single, 5-inch, 10-ounce egg, every other year. In captivity, the Boise center's 19 breeding pairs -- condors mate for life -- can produce multiple eggs every year. "Given they're so slow to reproduce naturally, we're still cranking out the birds," Parish said, adding that young of many wild raptors experience mortality rates of up to 50 percent.

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http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10945

Thats sad...