Feds Provide $2 Million: The federal government has given the Oregon Zoo $2 million to aid in the preservation of the California condor, which is on the verge of extinction. Condor Restoration Resiliency Project funding was included in the $1.7 trillion bipartisan year-end spending agreement reached by the United States Senate in December, thanks in large part to Oregon Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden.
Feds Provide $2 Million To Oregon Zoo
The Oregon Zoo announced that it would be able to continue its condor recovery efforts thanks to funds included in the year-end omnibus package signed into law by President Biden.
It is said that some of the money would be used to update the Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation, which is located in rural Clackamas County and serves as an extension of the Portland Zoo. According to Oregon Zoo director Heidi Rahn, the facility has been evacuated many times in recent years owing to wildfires and power outages caused by winter storms, despite being the second-largest condor breeding facility in the United States.
With Senators Merkley and Wyden’s assistance, our center will be better prepared to withstand weather-related events, protecting condors and personnel while allowing recovery operations to continue, said Rahn. Each baby bird that hatches at the rescue centre represents a possible survival link for the species as a whole.
The California condor was protected under the original Endangered Species Act of 1973. In 1982, only about 22 of these birds were thought to be alive in the wild. To ensure the species’ survival, researchers collected the last surviving condors in 1987 and began caring for them.
Since 2003, the Oregon Zoo has collaborated with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to “hatch and release as many condors as possible,” as the zoo puts it. The condor population has grown by over 300 percent to date, bringing the total number of wild condors to around 500. In 2022, the zoo experienced an all-time high with the birth of twelve condor chicks. The zoo released eight condors into the wild, in addition to the three birds used in the groundbreaking reintroduction by the Yurok Tribe in Humboldt County, California.
The Oregon Zoo has been awarded $2 million to further support the conservation of the California condor — a critically endangered species. https://t.co/Thmo1uN2PR
— KOIN News (@KOINNews) January 3, 2023
Keeper Kelli Walker, the director of the Oregon Zoo’s condor exhibit, stated in August 2022 that the young birds spend at least eight months with their parents and a year in outdoor “pre-release enclosures” before being released into the wilds of California and Arizona.
There are still “huge fluffy balls of anger” among the chicks, as Walker put it. However, it won’t be long before they’re mature condors. They will practice in larger cages until they are able to fly on their own before being released into the wild.
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