California condor (Gymnogyps Californianus) is a New World vulture of the family Cathartidae. California condors grow wingspans up to 9 feet, and weights approaching 16-31 pounds. Breeding maturity can be reached as early as the fifth year, and adults can be distinguished from juveniles by the orange coloration on the head and neck, and white panels on the underside wing surface.

California condors are primarily monomorphic, making it hard to distinguish males from females at a distance except for the slightly larger size of the males. Pursuant to the Condor Recovery Program identification system, condor # 1 has an estimated hatch year of 1966, showing that California condors can live in captivity at least 45 years (and counting).

Causes of the condor’s decline in North America began with the loss of megafauna ten to twelve thousand years ago. The increase in whaling activities in the 1800s decreased the availability of large carcasses on the west coast which was the mainstay of the California condor’s diet. Since that time American Indian harvests for religious ceremonies and possible trade artifacts, scientific collection in the late 19th Century, and the effect of the cattle ranch system adjacent to remaining condor range in Central and Southern California further exacerbated the condor’s decline.

The increase in development in California in the post war years, lead to a variety of factors that reduced habitat and food sources of the condor. Some of these factors include urban development, reduction in the size of cattle ranches, power lines, and the use of DDT insecticides. As a result, the population of condors declined to near extinction in the 1980s.

Currently, there is a significant controversy over morbidity and mortality claimed to be related to lead ingestion in California condors. While some researchers maintain that lead ammunition is the primary source of lead exposure in condors, there is compelling evidence of alternative sources of lead in the environment. Such alternative sources of lead include paint chips from old buildings, legacy leaded gasoline, mining wastes and microtrash.

The first condor to be identified as a lead-related mortality was Condor # 19 in March of 1984. No forensic analysis was performed on a 7-8mm metallic fragment reportedly recovered from the “gizzard” of the condor, though necropsy personnel reported being able to cut the sample with a metal scalpel.

Rarely if ever has an actual bullet fragment been found in the digestive tract of a condor.  However, objects that were thought to be bullet fragments were subsequently found to be pieces of gravel or a “woody” substance and not bullet fragments.

Hunt for Truth has also discovered that many of these researchers “cherry pick” their data, deleting underlying data and often refusing to present the underlying data to scientific peer reviewers, policy makers and the public at large. This activity by the researchers calls their very claims into serious question.

Condors were first listed as protected species in California in 1967, and were federally listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1973. As of April of 2011, there were some 394 California condors in the world population, with roughly half in captivity. While California condors located in California are listed as Endangered, a number of condors released in Arizona and Utah are classified as 10(j)-nonessential/experimental, as that term is defined under the Endangered Species Act, to the survival of the species.

All current free-flying California condors are descendants of the captive breeding program initiated in the early 1980s. All original remaining wild, free-flying condors captured by 1987 remain in captivity. While the breeding program started off with 5 wild and inter-related female California condors in 1987, all captive and free-flying condors are primarily descendants of 4 females, Condors # 10, 11, 12, and 13. Thus, the threat of a genetic bottleneck contributing to the eventual demise of the species is extremely high, and a natural recovery may not be possible due to the genetic factor alone.

In the wild, mature California condors lay eggs once every other year. In captivity, California condors have been induced to produce 2 or 3 eggs in each successive season by the process of “double clutching” or “triple clutching.” In double clutching, the laid egg is removed from the artificial nest early enough that the female is capable of laying a second, or in some cases a third egg, in the same season.

Natural laid eggs can encounter failure rates between 50-100%. Captive laid eggs under human supervision have had greater than 50% failure rates despite intensive veterinary monitoring. Hunt for Truth has found through intensive research that serious and significant impacts on California condor populations were the result of the widespread use of DDT, other organochlorine pesticides, and certain rodenticides throughout the remaining condor habitat in Central and Southern California. The resulting adverse impact on egg survival rates due to pesticide exposure, coupled with a natural breeding cycle where condors only lay eggs naturally once every two years, population losses to inadequate food, and collisions with power lines and other building structures, contributed to serious declines in the population by the late 1960s.

Hunt for Truth has also learned that Federal and State officials have long been aware of historical adverse impacts on condors by DDT and DDE pesticide residues. Hunt for Truth has uncovered that Federal and State officials permitted the re-release of endangered California condors into the environment for “recovery” purposes, with the full knowledge that the historical DDT and DDE threat had not been mitigated.

Ventana Wildlife Society, a Condor Recovery Program partner, considers exposure to elevated levels of DDE to be the key factor that inhibits the meeting of condor recovery goals along the Big Sur Coast in California. The fact that the Condor Recovery Program personnel at both the Federal and the State level had access to this information, combined with the fact that they are currently encountering egg-shell thinning related to DDE exposure, may mean that release of California condors into these hazardous geographies violate of the Endangered Species Act.