Condor Enthusiasts-
Grand Canyon National Park is currently revamping how we disseminate condor information. These updates have been typically provided by Ranger Marker Marshall, but now will be provided by Grand Canyon’s Wildlife Program. Thanks Marker for all your hard work on these over the years! To keep this transition relatively smooth, I’m providing this update without much structure just so people have the information in hand.
As of September 30th, the population numbers from the US Fish and Wildlife Service are as follows:
World Total: 410
Wild Population: 230
California: 125
Baja California: 28
Arizona/Utah Population: 77
Captive Population: 180
In addition to this, I do have a couple pieces of information I’d like to highlight:
- Condor chick 660, the chick of 187M/133F died last month. The chick was found below the nest cave. Necropsy results determined the chick died of unknown causes. With this fatality, all wild nests in the AZ/UT population failed during the 2012 breeding season.
- The 3 newly released condors (released on September 29th) are doing great!
- There are 3 additional condors currently being held in the flight pens at Vermilion Cliffs awaiting release.
Download/view latest Condor Chart 10/18/12 (PDF)
Janice Stroud-Settles, Wildlife Biologist
Division of Science and Resource Management
Grand Canyon National Park