The entire decoding of the California condor genome, published in 2021, additionally revealed valuable information concerning the hen’s evolutionary historical past and prehistoric abundance. Thousands and thousands of years in the past, it was a species with an efficient inhabitants of some 10,000 to 100,000 people. Its decline started about 40,000 years in the past over the past ice age, and was later exacerbated by human actions. Regardless of this, Steiner says, the species retains a genetic variability much like birds that aren’t endangered.

An issue with lead

Regardless of these nice efforts and a renewed understanding of the species, threats to the condor stay.

Within the Nineteen Eighties, when efforts to watch the final condors within the wild intensified, a revealing occasion happened: After 15 of them died, 4 have been necropsied, and the reason for loss of life of three of them was proven to be lead poisoning.

Though these Cathartiformes—from the Greek kathartes, that means “people who clear”—usually are not normally prey for hunters, their scavenging nature makes them oblique victims of hunter bullets, which kill them not by their influence, however by their composition. Feeding on the flesh of lifeless animals, condors ingest fragments of lead ammunition that stay embedded within the carcasses.

As soon as contained in the physique, lead—which builds up over time—acts as a neurotoxin that impacts the nervous, digestive, and reproductive techniques. Among the many most devastating results is paralysis of the crop, the organ the place condors retailer meals earlier than digesting it; this prevents them from feeding and causes hunger. Lead additionally interferes with the manufacturing of purple blood cells, inflicting anemia and progressively weakening the hen, and damages the nervous system, inflicting convulsions, blindness, and loss of life.

Efforts in the US to mitigate the specter of result in the condors have been intensive. Because the Nineteen Seventies, a number of methods have been applied, similar to provision of lead-free meals for condors, campaigns to teach hunters concerning the influence of lead bullet use on wildlife, and packages displaying conservation-area guests how necessary birds are to the ecosystem. Authorities laws have additionally performed a job, just like the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act of 2007, which mandates the usage of lead-free ammunition for big-game searching throughout the condor’s vary in California. Nonetheless, these efforts haven’t been ample.