Andean condor feared on the brink of extinction
Posted on July 24th, 2008The Andean condor, a bird with wings that span 10 feet, has long been mythologized by the people of the Andes mountains. But human development has threatened the bird’s food supplies, and the condor is quickly disappearing from its native range.
The bird has already become almost extinct in Venezuela, and only 150 specimens remain in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela combined. Even in Argentina and Chile, where about 2,000 condors still survive, food is often so scarce that they often are found eating trash in city dumps.
As people have settled farther into the condor’s territory, they have replaced its accustomed food sources — the remains of deer and other small mammals — with domesticated animals. As soon as they adapted to feed on dead and wounded livestock, farmers started moving their animals from open fields to feedlots, which the condors cannot infiltrate, and even hunting the birds outright.
The Andean condor is now facing the same circumstances that drove its cousin, the smaller California condor, to the brink of extinction (Jack Chang, Miami Herald, July 24). – LBD