LOS ANGELES — A record 17 California condor chicks hatched at the Los Angeles Zoo during this year's breeding season for the endangered birds , officials announced Wednesday. All the chicks will be candidates for release into the wild as part of the California Condor Recovery Program, the LA Zoo said in a statement. Condor chick LA1123, hatched April, 30, waits for its feeding May 2 in a temperature-controlled enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo.
The 17th and final bird of the season hatched in June and is thriving, zookeepers said. The previous record was set in 1997, when 15 California condor chicks hatched at the zoo. “Our condor team has raised the bar once again in the collaborative effort to save America’s largest flying bird from extinction,” Rose Legato, the zoo's Curator of Birds, said in the statement.
Legato said the recent record is a result of new breeding and rearing techniques developed at the zoo that put two or three chicks together to be raised by a single adult condor acting as a surrogate parent. “The result is more condor chicks in the program and ultimately more condors in the wild,” Legato said. Condor keeper Debbie Sears feeds condor chick LA1123 in May at the Los Angeles Zoo.
A California Condor named Hope is seen May 2, 2023, at the condor habitat at the Los Angeles Zoo. The California Condor Recovery Program is administered by the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service. Its mission is to propagate the iconic bird that decades ago was on the brink o.