Tragedy struck the Yurok tribe’s condor restoration efforts when one of many critically endangered birds succumbed to guide poisoning — a wholly preventable, human-caused risk — simply months after being launched from the Los Angeles Zoo into the wild.
The fowl, Pey-noh-pey-o-wok, had been flying freely for less than three months when he died within the backcountry of Redwood Nationwide Park after ingesting a lead air-gun pellet, the tribe introduced Wednesday. At 18 months previous, he was the youngest fowl in his flock of 18.
“A pure demise would have been much less painful for us, the people watching, as he began to flourish within the wild,” Tiana Williams-Claussen, the tribe’s wildlife division director, mentioned in an announcement. “That he was introduced down by one thing human-caused and preventable is devastating.”
Pey-noh-pey-o-wok, the tribe says, means “I’m pal or type or good-natured.” True to his identify, the younger condor was all the time keen to share his meals and infrequently noticed grooming and huddling along with different birds in his flock, Williams-Claussen mentioned within the assertion.
A pathology examination discovered an air-gun pellet in his gizzard and excessive concentrations of lead in his liver and bone. Lead poisoning is the one greatest risk to condors and liable for round half of all moralities.
In November, one other member of the flock spent 22 days receiving remedy for terribly elevated lead ranges on the Sequoia Park Zoo’s Condor Care Facility earlier than being re-released into the wild.
On the time, Yurok tribe biologist Chris West mentioned it “nearly appears inevitable that we are going to lose a fowl or birds to guide poisoning if nothing adjustments.”
This month, his prediction proved true.
“The lack of Pey-noh-pey-o-wok was an enormous blow to us. Dying is a part of work with wild animals, however his was exhausting as our first loss,” West mentioned. “Fortunately, we now have 17 different superb birds in our flock carrying our hopes, desires and prayers.”
Condors are scavengers and play an important position within the ecosystem by feeding on useless animals, stopping rotting carcasses from accumulating and serving to cease the unfold of illness. Sadly, this places them at an elevated threat of lead poisoning ought to they scavenge on an animal killed with lead ammunition.
Condors have a large wingspan of as much as 10 ft and, left undisturbed, can stay so long as 70 years. Sadly, lead poisoning, habitat loss, poaching and pesticide publicity have pushed the majestic birds to the brink of extinction.
Their inhabitants reached an all-time low of simply 23 birds in 1987 however has rebounded to round 500 because of devoted conservation efforts, based on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The Yurok tribe’s Northern California Condor Restoration Program performs a key position in these efforts by reintroducing condors to the tribe’s ancestral homelands.
The tribe considers the condors to be sacred and use its feathers, in addition to songs concerning the birds, in lots of their ceremonies. They plan to launch one other cohort of condors later this 12 months.
