Californian condor not extinct yet, but still regularly poisoned by lead

The image above, which may be the worst photo of a Californian condor ever taken, was the best shot I snapped during a four-hour condor-watching trip in 2010. But even this grainy image is important, for it captures one of the 405 last Californian condors in the world. Myra Finkelstein from the University of California, Santa Cruz writes that the condor is “a symbol of environmental tragedy and triumph”. The huge bird, with its three-metre wingspan and eerily smooth flight, was once widespread across North America. Between power lines, guns, and pesticides, their population plummeted. The birds were frequently poisoned by lead after scavenging off shot-filled carcasses, and that’s if poachers weren’t filling them with lead shot in a more direct way. By 1982, there were just 22 Californian condors left in the world, and all of them were in captivity. An intense captive breeding programme began, and it has ...