Reintroduction strategy for the Andean Condor Conservation Program, Argentina

ASTORE, VANESA; ESTRADA, RAYEN; JACOME, NORBERTO LUIS

International Zoo Yearbook

Blackwell Publishing Inc.

Año: 2016 vol. 51 p. 1 - 13

1748-1090

The Andeancondor Vultur gryphus is the largestbird in the world with flight capacity. For thousands of years the Andeancondor has been honoured as a sacred link between space and humans by indigenouscommunities. In the last 100 years, the range of this emblematic speciescontracted rapidly and the Andean condor was pronounced extinct at both ends ofits endemic South American range, in Venezuela and on the Atlantic coast of Patagonia. The Andean condor appears in Appendix I of the Convention onInternational Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and is listedas in Danger of Extinction by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Inaddition, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, thisspecies is classified as Near Threatened. In 1991, the Andean CondorConservation Program (PCCA: Programa Conservación Cóndor Andino) was founded inArgentina. The PCCA started by performing genetic analyses and documenting thecondor population in zoological institutions in a Latin American regionalstudbook. The PCCA then developed artificial-incubation programmes andtechniques for hand rearing birds without human contact, and worked to rescueand rehabilitate wild condors. The PCCA has succeeded in rearing 57 chicks andrescuing 197 wild condors. This paper describes the strategy used by the PCCAto reintroduce 160 condors throughout South America.