The Los Angeles Zoo is celebrating the end of its 2024 California condor breeding season with a record-breaking achievement: 17 chicks have hatched, all of which are candidates for release into the wild as part of the California Condor Recovery Program (CCRP).
The 17th and final chick of the season hatched in June and is thriving. This surpasses the previous record of 15 California condor chicks hatched at the LA Zoo, set in 1997.
Photographers struggled to capture the birth of this famously “ugly-cute” bird, with the LA Times dubbing the resulting photos “Ugly-cute baby photos.”
“Our condor team has raised the bar once again in the collaborative effort to save America’s largest flying bird from extinction,” said Rose Legato, Curator of Birds at the Los Angeles Zoo.
“What we are seeing now are the benefits of new breeding and rearing techniques developed and implemented by our team, which put two or three condor chicks together with adult surrogate condors to be raised. The result is more condor chicks in the program and ultimately more condors in the wild.”
In 2017, the LA Zoo pioneered a new breeding technique where animal care staff placed two condor chicks with a surrogate condor to raise them. Until then, no other zoo or CCRP partner had attempted this process. This year, the zoo’s condor team implemented a technique allowing three chicks to be raised simultaneously by a female—another first for the program.
This triple brooding process maximizes the zoo’s ability to raise condors without human interaction, helping the birds adjust more easily when released into the wild. It also enables breeding pairs to produce more than one viable egg in a season.
In the record-breaking 2024 breeding season, LA Zoo animal care staff successfully reared three single chicks, eight chicks in double brood situations, and six chicks in triple broods with adult mentors.
The condor breeding program at the zoo began back in 1967 with a single individual named Topa Topa, a malnourished fledgling rescued from the wild. By 1983, there were only 22 California condors remaining, prompting the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission to establish a captive breeding program, with the LA Zoo as a founding partner.
As of December 2023, there are 561 California condors in existence, with 344 living in the wild. These numbers fluctuate daily due to various influences. The California condor is the largest land bird in North America, boasting a wingspan of nearly 10 feet. Adult condors stand around three feet tall and weigh between 17 and 25 pounds. They can soar to heights of 15,000 feet and travel up to 150 miles a day, locating food primarily through their keen eyesight.
Similar to vultures and other scavengers, condors play a crucial role in nature’s cleaning crew, feeding on the carcasses of large mammals, including deer, cattle, and marine mammals such as whales and seals.
The LA Times reports that the chicks will remain in the zoo’s care for the next year and a half. Afterward, as has been done with the 250 chicks previously born at the zoo, they will be evaluated for their potential to be released back into the wild.