December 8, 2013 | Read Time: 1 minute
A new webcam gives animal lovers a glimpse into the lives of California condors in the wild.
It took more than a year for the Oakland Zoo and Ventana Wildlife Society to work out the technical challenges of live streaming from a remote area in California’s Big Sur, where the endangered birds congregate.
Now that Condor Cam is up and running, Ventana’s scientists can move the camera from their office computers to monitor the birds and look for signs of illness. For more than 20 years, the organization has worked to save the condor from extinction by trapping the birds and treating those that have high levels of lead in their blood.
“It’s not just, ‘Hey, isn’t this great? We can see condors in the wild,’” says Nancy Filippi, managing director of the Oakland Zoo. “This is a tool that the biologists will actually use in their daily work.”
Kelly Sorenson, Ventana’s executive director, hopes that being able to see condors up close will help people identify with the large birds, which have a wingspan of more than nine feet. He says that about 60 of the roughly 230 condors living in the wild are in central California. (Another Ventana website, MyCondor.org, tells the life history of each condor living in the area.)
“That’s not a whole lot of birds,” says Mr. Sorenson. “You could get to know this entire population as if it’s a soap opera.”
To get there: Go to oaklandzoo.org or ventanaws.org.
