Eight baby condors to soar over Andes by December
Copyright 2001 Reuters
November 09, 2001
By Louise Egan, Reuters
YERBA LOCA, Chile — Eight baby condors raised in captivity will soon be set free to soar above the craggy Andes mountains in an attempt to keep the legendary bird from dying out, wildlife experts said Thursday
.The flesh-eating scavengers, which as adults will have a wingspan of more than 10 feet, are being prepared by Chilean and Argentine conservationists for release in central Chile in late December.
"This is the first step of a binational program to reinsert Andean condors who were born in captivity into the region,'' Eduardo Pavez, the Chilean director of the Condor Release Project, told reporters.
The condor is the world's heaviest bird capable of flight and can travel 125 miles in a day.
The 2-year-old chicks, mainly the offspring of adults in Argentine and Chilean zoos, were moved last month to a spacious cage on a rocky plateau on the Yerba Loca nature reserve near Santiago. They are becoming familiar with their natural habitat.
"The idea is that they join their peers eventually,'' Pavez said at 7,000 feet. As he spoke, he pointed to four wild condors circling above a snow-streaked peak nearby.
"That will be a very emotional moment,'' Argentine biologist Luis Jacome said. "Nobody knows quite what they will do.''
The project members are especially fond of one of the birds, the son of a condor pair given as a gift in 1972 by socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende to Cuban President Fidel Castro as a symbol of Chile. The condor couple, still living in the Havana zoo, produced an egg that was taken to Buenos Aires for incubation and hatching. The chick was then brought to Chile in a symbolic return home.
'SPIRIT OF THE ANDES'
Baldheaded, beady-eyed, and soaring at altitudes of 15,000 feet, condors have been revered by indigenous people through the ages. Andean civilizations called the birds "the spirit of the Andes,'' believing the winged giants to be an intermediary between earthly souls and God. They portrayed them in pottery and rock paintings.
The condor population, once flourishing in the Andes from Venezuela in the north to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, was gradually devastated after the arrival of Europeans on the continent more than 500 years ago.
"The only natural enemy the condor has is man,'' Jacome said. Farmers mistakenly believed that the fierce-looking creature attacked livestock and opted to kill off as many as possible to protect their flocks. In reality, condors, like vultures, eat only carrion.
The condor has been declared extinct in Venezuela, and fewer than 100 birds are believed to survive in Colombia and Ecuador. The population in Peru and Bolivia has dwindled dramatically. It is larger in Chile and Argentina but still considered endangered.
Extreme precautions are being taken to ensure that the chicks have no human contact. Conservationists coax newborn chicks to eat by using life-sized condor puppets made of latex and felt.
Sprouting downy brown feathers and already more than three feet tall, the chicks may need help in feeding themselves for up to six months after their release, Jacome said.
With help from NASA, their flight patterns and nesting sites will be traced via microchips and satellite images.