Oakland Zoo Delivers Crucial Condor Care

Miracle, a 16-pound female condor about 6 years old, came to a special condor hospital in back of the zoo last Wednesday, after she flunked her blood test at Pinnacles National Park. Veterinarians found high levels of lead in her blood, almost certainly caused from ingesting lead shotgun pellets in the course of feeding on dead wild animals. The first wild condor chick hatched in California in more than a century, Miracle is also the first condor admitted to the Oakland Zoo condors-only emergency room this year. Lead poisoning is a leading cause of death among endangered California condors, only 60 of which survive. Since her arrival, Miracle has shown no outward symptoms of lead poisoning and “seems very feisty,” Goodnight said. Scavengers such as condors are attracted to freshly killed animals such as feral pigs and squirrels that a rancher might shoot as pests. According to Goodnight, a condor uses the bullet wound as a convenient way of getting at the animal’s guts, but that exposes them to the greatest amount of lead bullet fragments. The eighth, known as condor 444, was treated for lead poisoning and released in May but was recaptured in August and taken to the Los Angeles Zoo, where it died from a second round of lead poisoning. Sorenson said the problem is so great that his society, a wildlife conservation group, regularly gives away copper-based ammunition to hunters and ranchers to prevent them from using lead bullets. “She picks out all the good juicy organ meat and leaves behind the skin and fur,” Goodnight said.