The fifth California condor chick of this year’s breeding season is expected to hatch this weekend, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park reported Friday.
Anyone can watch this year’s chicks and its parents live on camera with the San Diego Zoo Global’s Condor Cam.
The first four hatched over the past two weeks, park officials said. The park’s condor conservation program usually sees between four and eight hatchings a year.
“This is an exciting time for us here at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park — watching each endangered chick emerge and the world’s population of condors continue to grow,” said Michael Mace, curator of birds at the park.
“Most of the chicks hatching this season will be released into their native habitat approximately a year from now,” Mace said. “Every chick that’s hatched is moving this species further away from extinction.”
The condor is listed as critically endangered, but the species has come a long way from its low point in the early 1980s, when scientists tallied just 22 remaining in the world.
Since then, almost 190 chicks have hatched in the park’s conservation program, and 130 birds have been released into the wild. Park officials estimate that there are currently more than 450 California condors, more than half of which are flying free in California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California.
— City News Service