Clackamas County, Oregon, United States – California condors at the Oregon Zoo’s Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation have produced 15 healthy chicks this year, marking the highest total in the zoo’s 23-year effort to help recover the critically endangered species.

Ten of the chicks are currently growing in nest boxes at the Jonsson Center, while five hatched under adoptive condor parents at The Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho. Condors at the Jonsson Center are also foster-rearing two chicks that hatched from eggs laid at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

“We have 12 sets of condor parents tending chicks right now, which is nearly a full house,” said Nicole LaGreco, who oversees the zoo’s condor recovery efforts.

The young birds will remain with their parents for at least eight months before moving to pre-release pens for about a year. They will later be transferred to wild release sites in California and Arizona to join free-flying condors.

Condors usually lay one egg each year, but several birds at the Jonsson Center produced two eggs this season. Keepers often place newly laid eggs in incubators and leave dummy eggs in nest boxes until hatching time.

In some cases, dummy eggs are not used, encouraging birds to lay a second egg. This practice, known as double clutching, has helped boost condor numbers and improve genetic diversity throughout the recovery program.

The California condor was among the original species protected under the 1973 Endangered Species Act and is classified as critically endangered. Only 22 remained in the wild in 1982, and by 1987 all remaining condors were brought into human care to prevent extinction.

Recovery efforts have helped raise the global California condor population to more than 600 birds, most of them now flying free.

Since 2003, more than 150 chicks have hatched at the Jonsson Center, and more than 100 Oregon Zoo-raised condors have been sent to field pens for release. Several eggs laid by Oregon Zoo condors have also been placed in wild nests to hatch.

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