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National Geographic
6 days ago
- Health
- National Geographic
The astonishing superpowers of nature's most unloved animals
From their odd appendages to their unsavory hygiene, certain animals suffer an image problem. But their awkward attributes can be their biggest advantages. Found across every continent except Antarctica and Australia, vultures like the lappet-faced species have lived among humans for millennia. But because they feast on the remains of dead animals, they've been saddled with a reputation for carrying disease. Quite the contrary: By devouring rotting flesh, these scavengers prevent the spread of pathogens that cause bubonic plague, anthrax, and other diseases. They even stop carrion from emitting tens of millions of metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. We owe a lot to this feathered cleanup crew. Photographs and video by Joel Sartore The vulture has to be one of the most reviled creatures on Earth. The very word 'vulture' is an insult—a synonym for a greedy exploiter. In a way, vultures' bad reputation is understandable. For starters, they are neither cute nor cuddly, what with their stooped posture, bare heads, and beady eyes. They spend their days eating dead animals—and they do it in a stomach-churning way, by entering the corpse at its soft parts such as the mouth, nose, or anus. 'Vultures definitely have an image problem,' says National Geographic Explorer Darcy Ogada, Africa program director at the conservation nonprofit Peregrine Fund, who points out that a bald bird sticking its beak up the rear end of a wildebeest wouldn't make for the most appealing magazine cover. The birds' PR problem has real-world consequences. It causes us to overlook the vultures' fascinating behavior and vital role in our ecosystem. Without vultures, bad things happen. These birds act as nature's cleaners, hoovering up rotting carcasses and preventing the spread of disease. (Africa's vultures are disappearing. A series of disasters could follow.) Consider the drastic situation in India. Starting three decades ago, vultures nearly disappeared after millions of them were accidentally poisoned by medicine used on cows, which turned out to be toxic to vultures. As a result, the countryside became littered with rotting, germ-filled animal corpses that infected the rivers and drinking water—and also boosted the population of rabies-carrying feral dogs. According to a recent study in the American Economic Review, the decline in vultures correlated with more than half a million excess human deaths in a population sample in India between 2000 and 2005. In an ideal world, the disappearing vulture population would be a conservation priority. But it isn't. The vast majority of global conservation money goes to a few top species, usually large animals such as rhinos, elephants, and gorillas. 'The rest of conservation gets the scraps,' Ogada says. The animals fighting over those crumbs are what you might call the D-list species. The outcasts. We're talking about the vultures, the naked mole rats, and the proboscis monkeys with their pendulous blobby schnozzes. They're not pretty. They're not colorful. They often do gross things, such as eating feces, a habit of the naked mole rat. They are the polar opposites of the conservation icons: the lions, pandas, penguins, and giraffes that star in nature documentaries, appear on our cereal boxes, and get the lead roles in animated movies. Conservationists call the A-listers charismatic megafauna or flagship species. Several studies show that they get a lopsided share of donations. As one study puts it, 'Animal charisma trumps endangered status.' Just one example: Amphibians account for about 25 percent of threatened vertebrate species, but get only 2.5 percent of funding. No one wants to kiss or donate to a slimy frog. From scuba diving to set-jetting (How does the Endangered Species Act protect animals at risk?) What does it take to be a Very Important Animal? It helps if you're cute, furry, jumbo size, and/or adorned with attention-grabbing outerwear—think the interesting patterns of leopards and zebras. Cuteness is an especially powerful draw, thanks to our brain's programming. 'What we find is cute in animals is often the same things we find cute in human babies, such as big, forward-facing eyes,' says Gabby Salazar, an environmental social scientist and National Geographic Explorer. We're genetically designed to love and nurture babies, and babyish animals such as the panda (which appears on the WWF logo) reap the benefits. Being on the A-list comes with yet another benefit, what psychologists call the halo effect. This means that we mistakenly imbue attractive people and animals with additional positive characteristics, such as moral goodness. It's why so many movie heroes are equipped with gleaming teeth and chiseled jaws and so many villains have scars. But in reality, both with humans and animals, prettiness doesn't equal benevolence or courage, and neither does ugliness equal nastiness or cowardice. Just look at the toucan. 'I love toucans, but they don't just use that beak to eat fruit,' says Salazar. 'They also use that beak to scoop up baby birds from other birds' nests.' Not something you'd see Toucan Sam from Froot Loops doing. So how do we fix this PR problem? How do we get the animal kingdom's outcasts more attention and the conservation dollars they deserve? Salazar says one key is to tell better stories. For starters, we can highlight the benefits some of these animals provide, such as the vultures' role in garbage disposal. This is actually a centuries-old strategy. In a tongue-in-cheek letter to his daughter, Ben Franklin questioned the candidacy of the bald eagle as a national emblem. He argued the dumpy turkey was 'respectable' and a 'bird of courage' that defended its home turf, just as the American colonists defended theirs. He contrasted this with the bald eagle, which Franklin called a bird of 'bad moral character' and accused of stealing fish from other birds (which it does). Another strategy is to reframe these animals' supposedly bad characteristics. For instance, the vulture's unpleasant-looking bald head is in fact a clever way to help keep the bird from collecting germs in its feathers when it's eating carcasses. The sloth's alleged laziness is really a brilliant evolutionary adaptation. Its slowness is a superefficient way to survive on a low-energy, leaf-filled diet. The naked mole rat may look like a wrinkly bucktoothed hot dog, but this quirky creature has evolved to survive without oxygen for 18 minutes. One other idea is to lean into these animals' freakiness. Salazar says there's some new research on what are being called 'ugly-cute' animals. 'Ugly-cute animals are animals that are so weird or not stereotypically cute that they actually end up being fun and make us smile and laugh,' she says. 'Some species are wacky enough that they can benefit from this ugly-cute phenomenon.' Exhibit A is the blobfish, an internet star with its ugly mug featured next to captions such as 'How I feel on Mondays.' Salazar cites a recent study on proboscis monkeys and how internet memes correlated with an increase in donations to protect these Southeast Asian primates. 'In this attention economy, there's some novelty and humor we could capitalize on,' she says. So let's get the revolution started. It's time to embrace the outcasts. Here's to hoping that one day we see cartoon naked mole rats on cereal boxes, college football teams named the Vultures, and a blobfish getting its own Pixar movie. For now, below, we celebrate the bizarrely brilliant traits and behaviors of these D-list creatures. Three-toed sloth Early depictions of sloths show why the slow-moving animals, native to Central and South America, got a bad rap from the get-go. One 19th-century account labeled them 'imperfect monsters of creation,' adding 'equally remarkable for their disgusting appearance and helpless condition.' Sloths can't help that several species of algae grow in the grooves of their coarse, matted fur, giving it a strange, green sheen. But this odd adaptation is a secret weapon—the algae help camouflage the canopy-dwelling creatures. Inspiring lethargy: Sloths have the slowest metabolic rate of any nonhibernating animal, allowing them to conserve the energy they get from their restricted diet. These sedate creatures descend to the forest floor to defecate as rarely as once a week. Variable vertebrates: While most mammals have seven neck vertebrae, some sloth species have more or fewer. Extra bones in the neck of three-toed sloths provide increased range of motion, helpful for surveying their habitat for predators. Helpful passengers: Sloth fur supports robust communities of insects, such as beetles, cockroaches, and moths. Several moth species spend almost their entire lives nestled in sloths' coats. They lay eggs in the sloths' dung and provide nutrients thought to nourish the algae that grow in sloths' fur. Grappling hooks: All sloth species, which mostly eat leaves, have long claws that help them grasp tree branches in the canopy. The claws are made from bone encased in keratin—the same protein that forms human hair and nails. Leopard slug You can't blame people for having a hard time relating to any animal without a spine. But slimy gastropods like slugs and snails have a surprisingly useful set of adaptations. A crown of four wriggling feelers atop the leopard slugs' head allows them to sense their surroundings, and their gooey ooze helps them mate. Slug mucus, which is made from water, proteins, enzymes, and other compounds, has served as inspiration for surgical adhesive. Specialized sensors: Leopard slugs have two sets of forward-facing tentacles, an optical pair for seeing and smelling and another set for tasting and feeling. Impactful appetites: Slugs play an important role in the ecosystem by consuming decomposing plants and insects, returning vital nutrients to the soil. Asexual reproduction: All terrestrial slugs are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs and can reproduce independently if they aren't able to find a mate. Male proboscis monkeys are adorned with an oversize, fleshy snout that drapes across their face. The protrusion may seem comical and impractical to humans, but it has an important purpose. These caramel-colored primates, native to the lush jungles of Borneo in Southeast Asia, live in large communities broken down into smaller roving groups of males and then harems, or groups of females and their offspring, that are dominated by a single male. Competition for female attention—which earns one a larger harem—can be fierce among males. Female proboscis monkeys gravitate toward males with the largest sniffer. Built-in bullhorn: Nearly four inches long, the males' fleshy nose doesn't just attract mates. It's also thought to amplify the monkeys' raucous vocalizations, a chorus of honks, howls, and roars. African bullfrog Often overlooked, slimy amphibians like frogs and salamanders are the focus of meager conservation funding, considering how many species are threatened or endangered. The bulbous African bullfrog is the world's second largest frog species—males can be 10 inches long and weigh as much as four pounds. And they can look even bigger: When the frogs feel threatened, they puff up their lumpy bodies to intimidate predators. Sturdy kickers: Muscular hind legs help bullfrogs dig burrows to better surprise prey like lizards and birds. Super spit: Frog saliva changes consistency when force is applied to it. While bullfrogs rest, their spit is thick, sticky, and gloopy, but when the tongue shoots out and latches on to prey, the spit transforms into a watery substance that coats the target. Skin cocoon: During the dry season, African bullfrogs can go dormant and grow a paperlike shell, made of layers of dead skin, that helps trap moisture. When the rain comes, the cocoon washes away. Honey badgers Found throughout sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in the Middle East and western Asia, these scrappy predators have a fearsome reputation, thanks to a set of impressive adaptations. For one, honey badgers have developed a resistance to venomous snakes' neurotoxins, and approximately a quarter of their diet consists of snakes. But a love of honey also compels these aptly named animals to raid beehives. Fortunately, their thick skin safeguards them against the hundreds of ensuing stings. The honey badgers' hunting prowess pays off even for other species: Jackals and goshawks in search of a tasty morsel may follow a honey badger as it looks for a meal. Venom-resistant receptors: Adaptations in the honey badgers' nervous system block the effects of neurotoxins delivered by snakes like the Cape cobra and black mamba that the animals snack on. Mighty mitts: Honey badgers' claws, more than an inch long, can rip open beehives, dead animals, and prey such as lizards. The creatures also use their keratin talons to dig dens and carve out space in abandoned burrows. Rubbery skin: Beneath their fur, honey badgers' skin is thick and loose, able to withstand snakebites and bee stings and difficult for predators, like African wild dogs and hyenas, to hang on to. Natural musk: The formidable mammals release a mustard-like substance from their anal glands, which can be used in self-defense and to mark their home range. Scrub fowl The gargantuan feet of birds in the megapode family like the Tongan scrub fowl may look clumsy, but they're actually a superpower. These stocky, chicken-size birds, found throughout Australasia, typically roost in forests, on sun-drenched beaches, or near geothermal areas, and they use their feet to build sandy burrows or mound nests from rotting vegetation. After they hatch, Tongan scrub fowl chicks use their feet to claw themselves from their burrows, which can reach depths of five and a half feet. Substantial footprint: Megapode literally translates to 'large foot.' The birds have evolved sharp claws to help them dig through mud and vegetation. Aye-aye Madagascar has its share of charismatic primates, like the rambunctious ring-tailed lemur, but the island's most captivating characters may be the eerie aye-ayes. The scraggly animals, including this 16-day-old baby, have piercing eyes, a long tail, and coarse fur. Aye-ayes, Earth's largest nocturnal primates, are so visually off-putting that some people consider them bad luck and kill them on sight, which has put the animals' population in jeopardy. Fortunately, efforts to rehabilitate their image are under way, with conservationists and farmers helping local communities recognize that aye-ayes are effective predators of leaf miner larvae that are ravaging clove trees along the east coast. Enormous ears: Massive, batlike ears can pick up the sounds of grubs and other insects wriggling deep inside tree trunks. Keen peepers: Unlike other nocturnal primates, aye-ayes are genetically adapted to see a wider spectrum of the color blue, which helps them spot appetizing blue flowers in twilight conditions. Tricky fingers: Aye-ayes' slender middle fingers are equipped with a unique ball-and-socket joint for increased range of motion. They tap these fingers on tree trunks to locate insect tunnels and scoop out beetle larvae, a method called percussive foraging. Hairy frogfish Since the late 1600s, when a Dutch sea captain and his crew discovered a frogfish among a shipwreck's debris, the vaguely toadlike creatures have earned their place among the ocean's oddities. One 19th-century naturalist described them as 'the most grotesque' of all fishes. Found in tropical and subtropical waters around the world, most frogfish are covered in a web of stringy spinules that help them blend in among algae-coated rocks and coral while hunting prey. What may seem like a quick bite to the frogfish can be a win for the ecosystem. In the Caribbean, they eat lionfish, introduced species whose ravenous appetites threaten the health of economically important ecosystems like coral reefs. Bewitching lure: An appendage on the head twitches and twirls like a worm or small fish in the water to draw in unsuspecting prey—a behavior known as aggressive mimicry. Color-changing skin: Pigment cells in frogfish can adjust their coloration to match their surroundings, camouflaging the fish from predators and prey. Fins made for walking: Frogfish are clumsy swimmers and often clamber over rocks and coral using their bulky fins, which consist of specialized muscle arrangements. This behavior caused some early naturalists to misclassify the animals as amphibians. Indian flying foxes Bats can thank author Bram Stoker and various tales of vampire folklore for their reputation as bloodsucking monsters. The Indian flying foxes' intimidating size—they're one of the biggest bat species—dark eyes, sharp teeth, and propensity to congregate in large numbers don't help their image. Found in forests and marshes throughout South Asia, extending into Myanmar, these bats roost in huge colonies, some exceeding a thousand individuals. With a diet of mostly fruits and nectar, they're also one of the world's largest natural pollinators. Goliath wingspan: Fully spread, the wings of Indian flying foxes can stretch over five feet. By comparison, common vampire bats in Central and South America have a wingspan that can reach 15 inches. Heightened senses: As fruit-eaters, these bats rely on sight and smell, sharpened over years of evolution, rather than echolocation, which tends to be used by insectivores. "Underdogs" will premiere on National Geographic June 15th and stream the next day on Disney+ and Hulu. Please check local listings. A version of this story appears in the July 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine. The National Geographic Society funds Explorer Joel Sartore's Photo Ark project, which aims to document every species living in the world's zoos, aquariums, and wildlife sanctuaries.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Caring for the condors: At remote Arizona wildlife center, biologists treat endangered birds
MARBLE CANYON, Ariz. — Nestled among Arizona's colossal Vermilion Cliffs, an inconspicuous building bustles with the sounds of flapping wings. Inside the remote building, no larger than a double wide mobile home, a team of dedicated biologists works overtime to sustain one of the nation's most endangered species, the California condor. Known to the biologists as 'The Barn,' the three-room facility and attached enclosure is where wild condors are brought to receive treatment and rehabilitation from the species' biggest threat: lead poisoning. Inside the small examination room, Tim Hauck stands by a computer monitor viewing an x-ray of a California condor perched in the attached enclosure. Hauck is the director of the California Condor Recovery Program at the Peregrine Fund, the organization that's permitted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to manage the Arizona-Utah experimental population. With each scan, he meticulously looks for metal fragments that could be slowly poisoning the bird from the inside. The condor has likely ingested lead bullet fragments embedded in the remains of a dead animal caused by hunting or humane dispatch. Recent years have been busy for the condor crew, as an outbreak of the highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as HPAI or bird flu, resulted in the death of 21 condors in 2023 and set back recovery efforts by about a decade. Since then, biologists have incorporated new biosecurity measures as they respond to the persistent threat of lead poisoning. On average, the Peregrine Fund team can trap and test about 75% of the flock for lead poisoning between November and February. Last year, about half of the tested birds required treatment, slightly higher than the average of 40%, according to Hauck. Data is still being collected about how lead poisoning is affecting the flock this year. Occasionally, a condor will be treated twice within the same year, with some individuals having abnormally high amounts of the toxic metal in their digestive tracts. This is an indication that lead exposure is a regular occurrence for many of the birds, with the highest exposure periods occurring during and after the big game hunting seasons. 'Lead is our primary threat,' said Hauck. 'Our number one objective is to make sure that the birds are healthy, and if they're not, getting them healthy.' In addition to providing treatment, the small team of biologists spends time in the field tracking the locations of the flock, monitoring their breeding and social behaviors and looking for signs of illness or distress. Sometimes, this requires extraordinary measures, such as when the biologists hiked on foot into a remote canyon with a large animal carrier to capture condor 999 in 2022. The condor had been seriously wounded after a suspected golden eagle attack and required veterinary care from a wildlife rehabilitation center in Phoenix. The condor, known to the staff affectionately as 'Nines,' was released back into the wild, but returned to the Vermilion Cliffs facility this year for lead poisoning treatment. 'Some people would write us off as whack jobs. We're crazy, right? We're more dedicated to wildlife than we are to our fellow humans,' said Chris Parish, president of the Peregrine Fund, 'Well that's not true, because everything we're doing is to make sure that the future generations have it better than we found it. And I think it brings out the best.' As the endangered condors enter this year's breeding season amid threats of avian flu and lead poisoning, wildlife managers are working overtime to maintain a species whose fate is closely intertwined with human activity. A California condor's presence cannot be ignored. The largest land bird in North America, an adult condor has a wingspan of almost 10 feet and can weigh up to 25 pounds. Since prehistoric times, condors have soared above much of the continent, with a modern historic range stretching from British Columbia to Baja. By the mid-20th century, the population had drastically declined due to shooting, poisoning from lead and DDT pesticide, and habitat degradation. After the passage of the Endangered Species Protection Act of 1966, the first piece of federal comprehensive endangered species legislation, the California condor was one of the first species listed in danger of extinction. By 1982, there were only 22 California condors left in the world. Wildlife managers made a dramatic decision. By 1987, every wild condor was captured and placed into a captive breeding program in an attempt to save the majestic species. This program would evolve into one of the most intensive wildlife management programs in U.S. history. Led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the recovery program includes federal agencies in the United States and Mexico, state wildlife management agencies in Arizona, California, and Utah, a number of zoos and nonprofit organizations, and the Yurok Tribe in northern California. The Yurok Tribe is one of the many indigenous cultures that consider the California condor sacred, and after initiating a reintroduction program in 2008, the tribe and its federal partners began releasing condors onto Yurok ancestral territory and Redwood National Park in 2022. Today, there are five free-flying populations of California condors in North America: three in California, one in Mexico, and one near the border of Arizona and Utah near the Grand Canyon. In 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife reported 344 California condors living in the wild, 90 of which belong to the Arizona flock. Each wild condor wears an identifying number and a tracking device, giving wildlife managers the ability to keep close tabs on the location of each individual bird. 'Most programs are a little bit envious of our ability to track all (the condors),' said Ashleigh Blackford, the Director of the California Condor Recovery Program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Blackford has worked on other species recovery programs for the Service and acknowledged the unique heavy management of the California condor population by the recovery teams. 'Eventually, you want the species to be succeeding to the degree that you can't do that anymore.' To be downlisted from 'endangered' to 'threatened,' there must be at least two successful wild California condor populations with at least 150 individual birds, among other goals. In the wild, a condor will reach breeding age around six years of age, and a breeding pair of condors will produce a single successful egg about once every two years. This lengthy reproductive period and high mortality caused by lead poisoning have left the condor populations struggling to reach the 150-count benchmark. 'The goal is not to be managing the flock the way we are,' said Blackford. 'A lot of our close management is still related to that primary threat of lead on the landscape and being able to be responsive in our management actions.' By far, the largest threat to California condors in the wild is lead poisoning. Between 1992 and 2023, lead poisoning accounted for the mortality of 137 wild condors, 48% of all known deaths, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the Arizona-Utah population, at least 52 individual birds have died from lead poisoning since being introduced to the region in 1996. Lead bullets can break into thousands of small pieces as they enter an animal, and those fragments can be toxic to the wildlife that feed on the carcass or gut piles left behind by hunters, ranchers or police on the landscape. When non-lead ammo is used, hunting can be a positive practice for the California condor population. Hunting provides a valuable food source for the condors because they are obligate scavengers, meaning they will only eat animals that are already dead. The Arizona Game and Fish Department has had some success removing lead from the landscape. All deer, bighorn sheep, and bison hunters who draw tags in the areas where California condors soar receive a coupon for a free or discounted box of non-lead ammunition. The department also does outreach to inform hunters of the impacts of lead ammunition on wildlife. In 2024, some 54% of successful hunters used non-lead bullets and 28% packed out animal gut piles in condor habitat, according to Erin Brown, the California condor program coordinator at Arizona Game and Fish. Multiple challenges remain for changing the behaviors of the remaining hunters. Lead ammo can cost slightly less than the non-lead alternative, and some hunters are skeptical about its effectiveness. 'We're seeing there are some folks who just are not interested,' said Brown, 'Lead free ammunition has come a long way in the last several years. And I think folks still have an old mindset that it's not good for the gun or it doesn't shoot well, and that's just not accurate anymore.' In 2017, the Peregrine Fund, the Oregon Zoo and the Institute for Wildlife Studies established the North American Non-lead Partnership, which designs and supports voluntary measures to increase the use of non-lead ammunition among all stakeholders who use firearms outdoors. 'This campaign has been all inclusive in trying to share that information with wildlife managers, with law enforcement, with ranchers and with hunters,' said Parish of the Peregrine Fund. 'A lot of people would like to take this and say it's an attack against hunting. Well, no, it's not meant to be. That's how some people perceive it.' In 2019, a law banning the use of lead ammunition in all types of hunting took effect in California. Despite this, lead poisoning continues to be a leading cause of death for condors in the state, claiming the lives of seven condors in California in 2023, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife. It only takes one lead-laden carcass to poison multiple members of the flock. Known as 'nature's clean up crew,' the condors often feed on the same food source due to their highly social nature, and as opportunistic feeders, they take every chance to eat a carcass down to the bone. 'Our goal is just to provide information to hunters, let them understand their conservation impacts and whether or not they want to choose to participate,' said Brown. 'And overall, as hunters continue to participate in these conservation activities, the long term impacts of removing lead fragments from the landscape are going to extend beyond California condor recovery and just make a much bigger impact on the landscape.' When the California condors began acting lethargic and fatigued in the spring of 2023, the biologists believed the birds were experiencing symptoms of lead poisoning. It wasn't until after they brought them into the facility that they discovered the population had contracted the highly pathogenic avian influenza or bird flu. For three weeks, the avian flu ravaged the population. The condor team was working overtime to contain the spread and treat the sick birds, often being forced to take mandatory breaks. 'It was like we were losing a bird a day. So we lost 21 birds in three weeks,' said Hauck. 'When we were in it, it felt like it was a lifetime.' It is still unclear how the condors initially contracted the avian flu, but the disease spread quickly due to their social nature. 'I wish that I had a crystal ball that could tell me how they contracted it. It seems like it was probably a fluke, and it was a rare occurrence,' said Hauck. 'But it happened. And as soon as you get something like that, in a population of a bird like the condor, which is a gregarious species, the probability of it spreading through the population is really high.' As recent cases of avian flu rise in wild birds across the country, the condor team feels better prepared to respond. An emergency vaccine was approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and 134 wild condors have been vaccinated by October 2024, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In Arizona, the biologists discovered through testing that many of the condors in the population had contracted the avian flu during the outbreak but survived. With the existing antibodies in their systems, the condor population is better protected from similar strains of the disease. In recent months, the outbreak of avian flu on dairy farms in California has become an emerging challenge for the condor recovery program, as dead calves are used as a supplemental food source for the birds. 'To date, we don't have a validated way to test a stillborn calf and say it's safe or it's unsafe,' said Blackford of U.S. Fish and Wildlife. 'We're making more broad swath decisions based on infection levels in counties and what our State Department of Agriculture is advising us on.' In Arizona, the Peregrine Fund's condor team is in close communication with the group's dairy farm partner to ensure that the dead calves they provide the condors are not infected. On the night of Jan. 30, only four condors received treatment, a relatively easy night for the team, who regularly care for more than a dozen birds at a time. As the biologists enter 'The Barn,' they don the coveralls hanging on the wall and swap their hiking shoes for rubber boots before two of the biologists enter the condors' enclosure with a large hand net. Each bird is brought inside one at a time, held carefully but firmly by a team member Hauck first checks the size of each bird's crop, a special pouch in their throat that holds food before digestion, and then administers the lead poisoning treatment. The condors undergo chelation therapy, in a process similar to what a human would receive for lead poisoning. The birds are injected every 12 hours with a chemical that removes toxic metal from their bodies on a weekly cycle. Their blood is tested periodically before the biologists determine if the condors are healthy enough to return to the wild. The work is laborious, but the crew is jovial. They know the birds on an individual level, calling them using nicknames, acknowledging their personality traits, or mentioning the similarities of the birds' parents or siblings. On the wall, a dry erase board displays the identifying number of each California Condor in the population that has died in remembrance with the message 'Keep the Fire Burnin' written alongside. The pressure is on to get as many adult condors onto the landscape as the breeding season begins and the slow cycle to bolster the condor population continues. In the fall, the Peregrine Fund releases California condors from its captive breeding program in Idaho into the Vermilion Cliffs' population. Among the condors released in 2024 was condor #1221, known as Milagra ('miracle' in Spanish), whose story encapsulates the biologists' commitment to the species. After her mother died of avian flu and her father became sick in 2023, Milagra was collected from the wild as an egg. Defying odds through intense intervention, the egg was incubated in captivity and raised with foster parents in Idaho. 'This bird, by all accounts, should not even be here. And it is here, because of this dedicated group of individuals that cares about the species and has made it their lifelong goal to see the species recover,' said Hauck. 'I think that's really special, and that resonates with a lot of people. It brings people into the fold, and that's ultimately what we want to do. We want to make people look at the condor as a species worthy of being on this landscape, because it almost wasn't.' Last September, Milagra was released back into the Vermilion Cliffs, soaring high above a cheering crowd. She has not returned for lead poisoning treatment. John Leos covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Sign up for AZ Climate, our weekly environment newsletter, and follow The Republic environmental reporting team at and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: In Arizona, biologists treat California condors for avian flu, lead
