California Condor Recovery Program Spreads Its Wings
SCE teams with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to enhance the power pole aversion training that has excelled in helping save the endangered birds from extinction.
California condors, which can fly as high as 15,000 feet, have gone from only 22 and near extinction in 1987 to 437 in the wild and captivity right now.
A California condor, with its ID tag attached, shares a panoramic view with a raven, which sometimes attack condor eggs and chicks in their nests.
SCE crews install one of the 30-foot poles for the power pole aversion training at Hopper Mountain.
SCE crews prepare to install the newer, bigger pole at Bitter Creek as the replica pole sits in the release site flight pen.
After installing the newer pole, SCE crews do repair work on the replica pole in the release site flight pen at Bitter Creek.
California condors have benefitted greatly from power pole aversion training, with no captive-bred condor being electrocuted while perched on a power pole since the program began in 1994.
All California condors, including these perched on a tree snag at the Hopper Mountain flight pen, are descended from 14 founders.
California condors lay only one egg per year, the lowest reproductive rate of any bird species.
