Also, careless people with guns shot the condors at will; and when ranchers put out poison to kill wolves and grizzly bears the condors then fed on those carcasses and were poisoned as well. In 1937 the U.S. Congress set aside a refuge for the condors in Santa Barbara County and in Ventura County in 1947, trying to protect these great birds, Peeters explains (p. 114). By 1987, there were only eight California Condors in the wild, so a decision was made to capture the remaining birds and begin a captive breeding program to try and save them from extinction.

The Endangered Species Bulletin (Behrens, et al., 2000) explains that the San Diego Wild Animal Park took the last pair of breeding condors into a captive breeding program and subsequently (in 1992) condors began to be released back into the wild. Today there are about 175 condors that have been...
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