Tag: Vultures

Snapping Trees Like Matchsticks And Cheetahs On The Hunt | Virtual Safari #311 – Londolozi Blog

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It’s that time of year again when the reserve smells like fermenting fruit, and the elephants are losing their minds and their manners over marula trees.

We started the morning with a massive bull who seemed to be weighing up his options. Elephants can be awfully destructive when they want the “good stuff” at the top. It’s not mindless; it’scalculated, but only in that moment, and does not involve any foresight. After a few half-hearted shakes that didn’t yield enough results, he decided the entire tree was better off horizontal. It’s tragic to us onlookers, but when you’re five tons, and you need to eat, you do what it takes.

Leaving the elephants to their feast, we made a dash across the property. Tayla had found a male cheetah, which we don’t exactly get daily. When we arrived, the tension was thick. We could only see a herd of Impala looking entirely too relaxed for their own good.

A flash of spots and scattering of impalas, ending in a successful hunt. But, as is often the case for the fastest animal out here, the victory was fleeting. The “tax men” were lurking.

After the chaos of the morning, the afternoon took a rather relaxed, calm route. We found ourselves parked at a waterhole, and frankly, we didn’t leave until the sun hit the horizon.

There is something strangely hypnotic about watching an African Jacana, the ultimate “single dad” of the bird world, navigate lily pads with three tiny, leggy chicks in tow. Combine that with a Common Moorhen family, and you have enough to keep you occupied for hours.

Enjoy This Virtual Safari…

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February 21, 2026
Black vultures attack, kill cattle. Climate change one reason they’re spreading north

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EMINENCE, Ky. — Allan Bryant scans the sky as he watches over a minutes-old calf huddled under a tree line with its mother. After a few failed tries, the calf stands on wobbly legs for the first time, looking to nurse.

Above, a pair of birds circle in the distance. Bryant, hoping they’re not black vultures, is relieved to see they’re only turkey vultures — red-headed and not aggressive.

“Honestly, the black vulture is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re easy to hate.”

Black vultures, scavengers that sometimes attack and kill sick or newborn animals, didn’t used to be a problem here. But now Bryant frequently sees the birds following a birth. He hasn’t lost a calf in several years, but they’ve killed his animals before. So now he takes measures to stop them.

In some of his fields, he erects a scarecrow of sorts — a dead black vulture — aimed at scaring off the birds. It’s a requirement of his depredation permit through the Kentucky Farm Bureau, which allows him to shoot a few birds a year. The dead bird keeps the live birds away for about a week, but they eventually come back, he said.

It’s a problem that may grow worse for cattle farmers as the scavenging birds’ range expands northward, in part due to climate change. Lobbying groups have been pushing for legislation that would allow landowners to kill more of these birds, which are protected but not endangered. But experts say more research is needed to better understand how the birds impact livestock and how their removal could affect ecosystems.

Black vultures used to mainly live in the southeastern U.S. and farther south in Latin and South America, but over the past century they’ve started to rapidly stretch northward and also west into the desert Southwest, said Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology who studies bird migration.

Warmer winters on average, fueled by climate change, are making it easier for the birds to stay in places that used to be too cold for them. What’s more, the human footprint in suburban and rural areas is enriching their habitat: development means cars, and cars mean roadkill. Cattle farms can also offer a buffet of vulnerable animals for vultures that learn the seasonal calving schedule.

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a lot of different studies of birds, it’s that they are very good at taking advantage of food resources and remembering where those things are,” Farnsworth said.

Although black vultures are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, they aren’t really a migratory species, he said. Instead, they breed, and some disperse to new areas and settle there.

After losing a calf to a black vulture a decade ago, Tom Karr, who raises cattle near Pomeroy, Ohio, tried to move his fall calving season later in the year in hopes the vultures would be gone by then. But that didn’t help — the birds stay all year, he said.

Until newborn calves are a few days old, “we try to keep them up closer to the barns,” said Joanie Grimes, the owner of a 350-head calf-cow operation in Hillsboro, Ohio. She said they’ve been dealing with the birds for 15 years, but keeping them out of remote fields has helped improve matters.

Annette Ericksen has noticed the black vultures for several years on her property, Twin Maples Farm in Milton, West Virginia, but they haven’t yet lost any animals to them. When they expect calves and lambs, they move the livestock into a barn, and they also use dogs — Great Pyrenees — trained to patrol the fields and the barnyard for raptors that might hurt the animals.

The size of their operation makes it easier to account for every animal, but “any loss would be severely detrimental to our small business,” she wrote in an email.

Local cattlemen’s associations and state farm bureaus often work together to help producers get depredation permits, which allow them to shoot a few birds each year, as long as they keep track of it on paper.

“The difficulty with that is, if the birds show up, by the time you can get your permit, get all that taken care of, the damage is done,” said Brian Shuter, executive vice president of the Indiana Beef Cattle Association. Farmers said calves can be worth hundreds of dollars or upward of $1,000 or $2,000, depending on the breed.

In March, lawmakers in Congress introduced a bill that would let farmers capture or kill any black vulture “in order to prevent death, injury, or destruction to livestock.” Many farmers and others in the cattle industry have supported the move, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in July commended the House Natural Resources Committee for advancing the bill.

Farnsworth, of the Cornell lab, said it’s not necessarily a good thing to make it easier to kill black vultures, which he said fill “a super important role” in cleaning up “dead stuff.”

Simply killing the birds, Farnsworth said, may make room for more bothersome predators or scavengers. He said though black vultures can leave behind gory damage, current research doesn’t show that they account for an outsize proportion of livestock deaths.

But many farmers are unwilling to do nothing.

“They just basically eat them alive,” Karr said. “It is so disgusting.”

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Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social. Follow Joshua A. Bickel on Instagram, Bluesky and X @joshuabickel.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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October 31, 2025
Endangered life-saving vultures to be bred in Wales

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A falconry centre in mid Wales is hoping to breed life-saving rare African hooded vultures to help save them from extinction.

Hooded vultures, like other vulture species across Africa and Asia, are critically endangered, with fewer than 150,000 left in the wild.

In India, a decline in vultures is believed to have contributed to the deaths of half a million people because they clear up the carcasses of dead animals, helping to stop the spread of disease.

“It’s my life’s work,” said Luce Green, of Falconry Experience Wales. “I like to think of it as love into action.”

The latest assessment of African hooded vultures in 2021 showed numbers of mature adults had dropped to 131,000, and were continuing to fall.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, they are considered critically endangered.

Poisoning is one of the main threats they face, with poachers fearing circling vultures will give away their location. Another problem is the use of vulture parts in traditional medicine.

Hope for their survival partly rests with people like Ms Green and her partner Barry MacDonald who run Falconry Experience Wales in Newtown, Powys, and who have devoted decades to studying and caring for them.

“We are losing them at such rapid rates,” she said.

Luce Green says it’s her “life’s work” to save the African hooded vulture [BBC]

The centre has introduced its hand-reared male, called Togo, to a female called Hope. If they are successful, the pair would expect to have just one chick at a time.

“There are only 200 hooded vultures in a human-based environment and the race is on. It’s a fine line of what’s needed to actually save them,” said Ms Green.

The ambition is that any chicks may eventually become part of a release programme, but, for now, it is more a case of adding to the population here.

“We can’t get into that environment to put birds back because it’s not safe for them, so we have to manage the populations of the hooded vultures,” Ms Green said.

Rare African hooded vulture Togo, with mate Hope, in their enclosure in mid Wales [Falconry Experience Wales]

Breeding vultures is vital, according to Campbell Murn, head of conservation research and education at the Hawk Conservancy Trust and lecturer at the University of Reading.

“It’s super important to breed from these birds and maintain what we call a safety net population,” he said.

He added vultures were like the “canary in the coal mine”.

“If your vultures are dying and disappearing then you’ve really got some problems,” he explained.

“They’re not going to win a beauty contest, that’s for sure, but we should care for vultures because they’re amazing. They form these really strong pair bonds, they’re dedicated parents, they’re fastidiously clean.

“But of course they’re also really important in terms of environmental and ecological services that they provide. Some people call them nature’s dustbin collectors, they’re really good indicators of what’s happening in the ecosystems where they live.

“So if that ecosystem’s in poor health, those species that live at this part of the food chain, they’re also going to suffer poor health.”

The mid Wales falconry also hopes to breed white-backed vulture [Getty Images]

In the 1990s, the unintentional decimation of the vulture populations in India led to an increased awareness of their role in human health.

It was estimated their loss led to half a million deaths over five years due to the spread of disease and bacteria the vultures would have removed from the environment.

Adam Bloch and Holly Cale, who run the The Horstmann Trust vulture conservation charity based in Carmarthenshire, were involved in efforts to stop the decline in Asia.

“They are doing better in some regions,” said Ms Cale, “but there’s a long way to go”.

They run the European Endangered Species Programme for hooded vultures and provide support to individual breeding programmes like that being attempted in Newtown.

“We are the fall-back,” said Mr Bloch.

“The work we are doing, and zoos around Europe are doing, is really to be that lifeboat, to be that ark population.”

Barry MacDonald hopes to find Vinnie a suitable mate as his species is declining at “an alarming rate” [BBC]

At Falconry Experience Wales, there is also hope that captive birds like Vinnie can help another species – the white-backed vulture.

But, as yet, he has no mate.

“With the white-back vultures, globally there are only 270,000 of those left. In South Africa there’s only just over 7,000. They are declining at an alarming rate,” said Ms Green.

Hooded vultures and the white-backed vultures are, according to Mr Bloch, the species most at risk currently.

“They are like the Ford Escort of the vulture world in the sense that everybody just took them for granted, they were so common nobody really worried about them,” he said.

Falconry Experience Wales recently bought GPS trackers to be attached to four hooded vultures in west Africa, so that researchers can monitor their movements for up to five years.

They are also raising funds for poison response action kits, to help save affected birds.

But, while persecution in their native lands persists, the hope is that rearing even the smallest number of chicks in Wales could help save them from extinction.

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August 25, 2025
A rare condor hatched and raised by foster parents in captivity will soon get to live wild

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By all accounts, Milagra the “miracle” California condor shouldn’t be alive today.

But now at nearly 17 months old, she is one of four of the giant endangered birds who will get to stretch their wings in the wild as part of a release this weekend near the Grand Canyon.

There is no more appropriate name for a young bird that has managed to survive against all odds. Her mother died from the worst outbreak of avian flu in U.S. history soon after she laid her egg and her father nearly succumbed to the same fate while struggling to incubate the egg alone.

Milagra, which means miracle in Spanish, was rescued from her nest and hatched in captivity thanks to the care of her foster condor parents.

The emergency operation was part of a program established some 40 years ago to help bring the birds back from the brink of extinction when their numbers had plummeted to fewer than two dozen.

The Peregrine Fund and the Bureau of Land Management are streaming the release of Milagra and the others online Saturday from Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

Condors have been released there since 1996. But the annual practice was put on hold last year due to what is known as the “bird flu.” Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza killed 21 condors in the Utah-Arizona flock.

“This year’s condor release will be especially impactful given the losses we experienced in 2023 from HPAI and lead poisoning,” said Tim Hauck, The Peregrine Fund’s California Condor program director.

Today, as many as 360 of the birds are estimated to be living in the wild, with some in the Baja of Mexico and most in California, where similar releases continue. More than 200 others live in captivity.

The largest land bird in North America with a wing-span of 9.5 feet (2.9 meters), condors have been protected in the U.S. as an endangered species since 1967. Many conservationists consider it a miracle any still exist at all.

Robert Bate, manager of the Vermillion Cliffs monument, said the release is being shared online in real time “so that the scope and reach of this incredible and successful collaborative recovery effort can continue to inspire people worldwide.”

California condors mate for life with a lifespan up to 60 years and can travel up to 200 miles (322 kilometers) a day, which they have been known to do as they move back and forth between the Grand Canyon and Zion national parks.

The Peregrine Fund started breeding condors in cooperation with federal wildlife managers in 1993. The first was released into the wild in 1995, and it would be another eight year before the first chick was hatched out of captivity.

The fund’s biologists typically don’t name the birds they help raise in captivity, identifying them instead with numbers to avoid giving them human characteristics out of respect for the species.

They made an exception in the case of #1221, aka Milagra. They saw her journey as emblematic of the captive breeding program coming full circle.

Milagra’s foster father, #27, was hatched in the wild in California in 1983. He was one of the first brought into the program as a nestling when fewer than two dozen were known to still exist worldwide.

Convinced it was the species’ only hope for survival, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made an unprecedented, risky decision back then to capture the remaining 22 known to exist to launch the breeding program. Over time, it has grown with assistance from the Oregon Zoo, Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

“Once they realized California condors were great parents in captivity, they started allowing them to raise their own species,” said Leah Esquivel, propagation manager at the fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho.

Like all California condors in the wild today, Milagra’s biological parents were products of the program.

Milagra’s mother, #316, laid her softball-sized egg in a cave on the edge of an Arizona cliff in April 2023 — one of her last acts before she succumbed to avian flu. Sick himself, her biological father, #680, did his best to tend to the egg, but prospects for survival dwindled. So, when he made a rare departure from the nest, biologists who had been monitoring sick condors swooped in and snatched the lone egg.

“(He) was so focused on incubating the egg that he was not leaving to find food and water for himself, risking his own life,” Peregrine Fund spokesperson Jessica Schlarbaum said.

They stashed the fragile egg in a field incubator and raced 300 miles (480 kilometers) back to Phoenix, not unlike a human transplant team carrying a heart in an ice chest.

To the amazement of all, the egg hatched.

Milagra tested negative for the avian flu and spent about a week at the Liberty Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Mesa, Arizona, before she was taken to fund’s breeding facility in Idaho, where the foster parents took her under their wings.

Esquivel, the propagation manager, said Milagra’s foster mother, #59, has raised eight nestlings in her lifetime.

Esquivel described #59 as unique. While the bird never mates, she goes through all the other breeding motions each year and lays an egg.

“Her eggs are obviously infertile, but since she is a great mother, we use her and her mate to raise young,” Esquivel said. “We just swap the infertile egg out with a dummy egg, then place a hatching egg in the nest when we have one available for her.”

Milagra’s foster dad has sired about 30 young and helped raise nestlings in captivity for years.

After spending about seven months with foster parents, the youngsters head off to “condor school” in California to learn the basics: eating communally, strengthening muscles for flight and learning to get along with fellow condors.

For the biologists, recovery partners, volunteers and others who have persevered over the last year, Hauck summed up Saturday’s release of the birds from this year’s graduating class as “a moment of triumph.”

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September 28, 2024
New vaccine expected to give endangered California condors protection against deadly bird flu

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LOS ANGELES — Antibodies found in early results of a historic new vaccine trial are expected to give endangered California condors at least partial protection from the deadliest strain of avian influenza in U.S. history.

The California condor is the only bird species in the U.S. that has been approved for the new emergency-use vaccine, which was administered this summer to condors bred in captivity during a trial at the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and the Oregon Zoo.

Authorities launched the study after the avian influenza deaths earlier this year of 21 free-flying condors in Arizona, part of a Southwest flock usually accounting for a third of the wild population.

Wildlife officials feared that the outbreak’s toll on the California condor population could erase any gains made to rebuild the wild population, spurring the efforts to fast-track the vaccine.

After 40 years of recovery efforts to prevent the extinction of the iconic vulture with a 10-foot (3-meter) wingspan, the wild population today has fewer than 350 condors in flocks spanning from the Pacific Northwest to Baja California, Mexico.

“Losing 20 birds is effectively akin to setting the recovery program back by 10 years,” said Dr. Hendrik Nollens, vice president of wildlife health for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

The so-called bird flu reached the U.S. in February 2022 after wreaking havoc across Europe. U.S. agriculture officials consider this year’s cases to be part of last year’s outbreak, which was recorded as the country’s deadliest ever.

Authorities confirmed the flu’s presence earlier this month in commercial poultry flocks in South Dakota and Utah, heightening concerns ahead of the spring migratory season. The outbreak cost poultry producers nearly 59 million birds across 47 states, including egg-laying chickens and turkeys and chickens raised for meat. The flu also caused spikes in egg and turkey prices for consumers and cost the federal government more than $660 million.

Early results indicate that when 10 condors were vaccinated with half a milliliter (0.016 fluid ounces) on two occasions — an initial injection and a booster administered 21 days later — 60% of the birds showed measurable antibodies expected to protect them from avian flu after exposure.

“We’re thankful that we’re getting any immune response,” said Ashleigh Blackford, the California condor coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The population was nearly wiped out by hunting during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, as well as by poisoning from toxic pesticide DDT and lead ammunition.

In the 1980s, only 22 California condors were left in the wild. They were captured and placed in captive breeding programs to save the species. Zoo-bred birds were first released into the wild in 1992 and in the years since have been reintroduced into habitats from which they had disappeared. The ongoing re-wilding efforts are considered a conservation success.

The bird flu trial’s progress will allow wildlife officials to move forward and release roughly two dozen vaccinated condors into the wild in California and Arizona by the end of the year. The government is awaiting additional results before deciding whether free-flying condors should be captured and inoculated. Officials already vaccinate condors in captivity and in the wild for West Nile virus.

Dr. Carlos Sanchez, the Oregon Zoo’s director of animal health, said wildlife officials faced questions about undertaking the bird flu vaccine study.

“Human intervention, veterinary intervention, is not something we do all the time or take lightly,” he said. “It wasn’t an easy decision.”

The shots initially were tested on black vultures to make sure they could be safely injected into condors in managed care beginning in July. The post-inoculation monitoring and testing lasted 42 days and officials said no adverse reactions occurred.

Dr. Dominique Keller, the LA Zoo chief veterinarian, said participating in the historic trial was one of her career’s highlights. She hopes the condor study will lead to bird flu vaccines for other endangered species.

“It was just so incredible to be the first one to hold the vaccine in my hand and actually give it to the first bird,” she said.

The trial’s second test group includes 10 condors vaccinated with one dose of a single milliliter (0.03 fluid ounces). Results from those birds will determine whether condors in the wild will get the shot.

“We want to look at the data more holistically before we kind of jump ahead to what’s next,” Blackford said.

The condor is intrinsically tied to several Native American tribes in the West and is considered by tribal members to be equal or even superior to humans. The condor disappeared from the Yurok Tribe’s ancestral lands in Northern California in the late 1800s but returned in 2021 after major conservation efforts from a team led by Tiana Williams-Claussen, the tribe’s wildlife department director.

Watching the avian flu wipe out 21 birds in Arizona just a few years later was “deeply impactful” to members of the tribe, Williams-Claussen said. The study and vaccine could prevent a repeat of the devastation.

“We’re all kind of waiting with bated breath to see what the final results are going to be,” she said.

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October 16, 2023
Rare birdwing butterflies star in federal case against NY man accused of trafficking insects

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NEW YORK — Birdwing butterflies are among the rarest and largest to grace the planet, their 10-inch (25.4-centimeter) wingspans flapping through the rainforests of Southeast Asia and Australia. Their sheer size can make them hard to miss.

But the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn says Charles Limmer made tens of thousands of dollars over the past year by illegally trafficking flying insects, including endangered birdwings — whose numbers have fallen because of diminishing habitat and illegal poaching.

Trafficking of wildlife collectibles has become a serious and lucrative enterprise, despite a worldwide crackdown.

On Wednesday, the same federal authorities in Brooklyn announced six-count indictments against two people, one from Alabama and the other from Georgia, for importing, transporting and possessing $1.2 million in taxidermized birds and eggs. Federal prosecutors say the collection includes nearly 800 birds and about 2,600 eggs.

The two are accused of using sites such as eBay and Etsy to buy the mounted birds from around the world, including from Germany to South Africa and Uruguay. The collection of birds included protected species of canaries, falcons and woodpeckers.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement that it was “in our national and global interest to enforce federal laws and treaties” to protect endangered wildlife “from the harm of alleged profiteers.”

The six-count indictment against Limmer, a 75-year-old butterfly aficionado from Commack, New York, accuses him of working with overseas collaborators to smuggle some 1,000 lepidoptera, including some of the rarest and most endangered moths and butterflies in the world.

Federal authorities in New York say the Long Island man smuggled dried specimens of the species, circumventing U.S. laws by labeling shipments as “decorative wall coverings,” “origami paper craft” and “wall decorations.”

Attempts to reach Limmer by phone and email were unsuccessful.

Federal law prohibits the commercial export or import of wildlife without permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Additional authorization would need to be secured for endangered species, as part of an international partnership to protect wildlife from trafficking.

Limmer previously had a federal license to import and export wildlife, but it was suspended in October 2022.

Since then, the indictment alleges, Limmer illegally imported and exported more than $200,000 worth of shipments.

An eBay page of a seller going by “limmerleps” shows the account had made more than 4,600 sales on the shopping platform, many of the most recent sales were moths and butterflies. There were two birdwing specimens currently on sale and two were sold over the past year, according to the website.

An Etsy page connected to a seller going by the name “Limmer” had four ads for birdwings still advertised on Wednesday, including featuring a collection of five specimens with an asking price of $133. The seller’s listed address coincides with Limmer’s.

The indictment also seeks to force Limmer to give up his collection of some 1,000 butterflies, moths and other insects prosecutors say he illegally procured from overseas.

If convicted, the three men face up to 20 years in prison.

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October 11, 2023
Endangered hooded vulture escapes from Bay Area zoo

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Officials were working Thursday to capture an endangered hooded vulture that escaped from a zoo aviary in the San Francisco Bay Area that was destroyed after a massive tree fell on it during a storm

OAKLAND, Calif. — An endangered hooded vulture escaped from a zoo aviary in the San Francisco Bay Area that was destroyed after a massive tree fell on it during a storm. But the bird has remained on zoo grounds, and officials were working Thursday to entice it back.

The male hooded vulture and five other exotic birds, including two pied crows and three superb starlings, flew out from the aviary at the Oakland Zoo on Tuesday amid a wind-packed storm that pummeled the Bay Area, zoo spokeswoman Erin Dogan said.

But the birds stayed on zoo grounds, and a team of at least 12 zoo workers armed with binoculars, nets, and crates has already recovered the three starlings, Dogan said.

“They are choosing to stay near the zoo and near the aviary because it seems that’s where they feel safe,” she said.

The team has been working since Tuesday to entice the vulture with dead rats and the crows with mealworms to trap them and bring them back to safety, she said.

All the birds hatched in captivity, and it’s not clear if they would know how to survive outside the zoo, Dogan said.

“These are all birds that were raised in human care, so they haven’t had to fend for themselves,” she said.

None of these birds are birds of prey, and they are not a threat to other animals or people, Dogan said.

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March 23, 2023
Patagonia condor repopulation slows with possible wind farm

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SIERRA PAILEMAN, Argentina — It was a sunny morning when about 200 people trudged up a hill in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region with a singular mission: free two Andean condors that had been born in captivity.

The emotion in the air was palpable as conservationists got ready for a moment that so many had been working toward for months. But the joyous moment was also bittersweet.

Preliminary plans for a massive wind farm that could be located in the Somuncura Plateau to feed a green hydrogen project is putting at risk a three-decade-long effort to repopulate Patagonia’s Atlantic coast with a bird that is classified as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

While members of the Mapuche, the largest Indigenous group in the area, played traditional instruments, and children threw condor feathers into the air that symbolized their good wishes for the newly liberated birds, an eerie silence engulfed the mountain in Sierra Paileman in Rio Negro province as researchers opened the cages where the two specimens of the world’s largest flying bird were kept.

Huasi (meaning home in Quechua) seemed born for this moment. As soon as the cage opened, he spread his wings and took off without a moment’s hesitation. Yastay (meaning god that is protector of birds) appeared cautious, uncertain of the wide open Patagonia skies after spending his first two years in captivity, and it took him around an hour before taking off.

People hugged while researchers sprang into action and started tracking the birds. In the back of their minds were latent worries about what the potential for new wind farms in the area could mean for the lives of these newly released birds.

Conservationists fear the birds inevitably would collide with the rotating blades of the turbines and be killed. In neighboring Chile, an environmental impact study for a planned wind farm with 65 windmills concluded that as many as four of the rare condors could collide with the massive structures yearly. Environmental authorities rejected the project last year.

“Why are we freeing two? We generally free more than two,” Vanesa Astore, executive director of the Andean Condor Conservation Program, said. “We’re at like a maintenance level now.”

Researchers had to release Huasi and Yastay now or risk that they would have to remain in captivity for the rest of their lives, which can range from 70 to 80 years, Astore explained, noting condors can only adapt to the outside world if they are released before their third birthday.

The current uncertainty regarding the future of the wind farm that would be built by Australian firm Fortescue Future Industries has not only put conservationists on alert but has prompted them to slow the pace of reproduction and release of the Andean condors even as the company insists it has no plans to set up shop in the Somuncura Plateau.

Condors are notoriously slow breeders that only reach sexual maturity at 9 years old and have an offspring every three years, but researchers have found ways to speed that up by removing eggs from pairs in captivity to incubate artificially. When the egg is removed, the pair will then produce another egg within a month, which they will raise while the first one is raised by humans with the help of latex puppets meant to simulate their parents and help them recognize members of their own species.

That strategy allow researchers to “increase reproductive capacity by six times,” said Luis Jacome, the head of the Andean Condor Conservation Program.

That effort is now on pause.

“We aren’t maximizing because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Astore explained.

Since the conservation program started 30 years ago, 81 chicks have been born in captivity, 370 condors have been rehabilitated and 230 freed across South America, including Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia.

Sixty-six of those have been released along Patagonia’s Atlantic coast, where the bird was nowhere to be seen at the turn of the century even though Charles Darwin had written in the early 1800s about the presence of the large birds in the region.

The Andean condor has now made a comeback, and for many locals that has a spiritual resonance.

“The condor flies very high, so our elders used to say that the condor could take a message to those who are no longer here,” said Doris Canumil, 59, a Mapuche who took part in the ceremonies for the liberation of the condors.

While they celebrate the success of the program, conservationists worry it could all be erased.

“These birds that we’ve liberated, that once again joined the mountain range with the sea through their flight, that have matured and had their own offspring that live and fly here in this place, they will simply die in the blades of the windmills,” Jacome said. “So the condor would once again become extinct in the Atlantic coast.”

Conservationists found out about the proposed wind farm through the media and alarm bells immediately went off.

Last year, Fortescue unveiled a plan to invest $8.4 billion over a decade in a project to produce green hydrogen for export in what the government touted as the largest international investment in Argentina over the past two decades. In order to qualify as green, the hydrogen must be produced using renewable power, and that is where the windmill farm would come in, taking advantage of the strong, reliable winds of Patagonia.

The government of President Alberto Fernández celebrated the project, saying it would create 15,000 direct jobs and somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 indirect jobs.

Yet neither the company nor the provincial government of Rio Negro had carried out an environmental impact study before unveiling the project.

For now at least, Jacome said, the “only thing green are the dollars” attached to the project.

“We’re putting the cart before the horse,” Jacome said. “We need to have environmental impact studies that demonstrate what is going to be done, how many windmills, where they will be placed.”

Fortescue agrees and says it “is committed to evaluating the social, environmental, engineering, and economic considerations before committing to the development” of any project.

The Australian firm said in a statement that any pre-development study will include consultations with local organizations to “guarantee the protection of the local species such as the Andean Condor.”

Following questions about the project, Fortescue has decided to not measure winds at the Somuncura Plateau until the province finishes its environmental plan and will instead explore “other areas of interest within lands near Sierra Grande and the Province of Chubut,” the company said.

On Oct. 11, the Rio Negro provincial government said Fortescue launched a 12-month effort to analyze the environmental and social impacts of the project.

Provincial officials see the number of jobs attached to the project as key.

“On the one hand, we have to preserve and take care of our fauna,” Daniel Sanguinetti, Rio Negro’s planning and sustainable development secretary, said. But the government also must “promote the development of the 750,000 Rio Negro citizens who currently live (here) and generate sources of production and genuine work for all of them.”

Sanguinetti added it was important “not to get carried away by different situations that supposedly would happen at some time in the future when all of this would have been implemented, when the reality is that the project is in its initial phases.”

For those who have made repopulating the Patagonia coast with the condor their life’s work, the discussions over the future of the project are deeply personal.

“We feel a little bit like parents,” said Catalina Rostagno, who moved to the base camp in Rio Negro two and a half months ago for the process of liberating Huasi and Yastay. “The condor is a reflection of me.”

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Politi reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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October 18, 2022