LA Zoo Condor Turns 60, Saves Species

Topa Topa, a California condor that helped anchor the species’ recovery in captivity, is being honored for his 60th year at the Los Angeles Zoo. (lazoo.org) Zoo officials said Topa Topa arrived in 1967 after federal wildlife staff and an Audubon Society representative found him weak, malnourished and weighing 17 pounds in Ventura County. After 10 days of rehabilitation, he was returned to the wild, but observers saw no adult condors nearby and determined he could not forage or defend himself on his own. (lazoo.org) The Los Angeles Zoo said that made Topa Topa the first California condor to live in a zoo, and in 1978 he became the first California condor exhibited to the public. He later joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s California Condor Recovery Program as a founding breeding bird. (lazoo.org; fws.gov) The condor’s story sits inside a longer rescue effort that began after the federal government listed the species as endangered in 1967. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the recovery program, established in 1979, relies on captive breeding, releases into the wild and continued monitoring. (fws.gov) That work started from a collapse. California officials say condors had been pushed out of most of their historic range by shooting, poisoning, egg collecting, habitat disturbance and a shrinking food supply, and the birds still face lead poisoning, wire strikes and other human-caused threats. (wildlife.ca.gov; fws.gov) By 1982, only 22 condors remained in the wild, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Five years later, every remaining wild condor had been brought into captivity so breeding centers could try to rebuild the population. (fws.gov) The numbers are larger now, though the species is still endangered. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2025 annual count put the total world population at 607 condors, including 392 in the wild and 216 in California. (fws.gov) The Los Angeles Zoo says Topa Topa’s own line runs deep in that recovery effort: about 300 birds in his lineage, with 100 currently in the recovery program and 94 flying free in the wild. The zoo has continued breeding condors in recent years, including 10 chicks announced in June 2025. (lazoo.org; laist.com) California condors are North America’s largest land bird, with a wingspan of about 9.5 feet and a weight that can reach 25 pounds. They raise one chick at a time and young birds can depend on their parents for more than a year, which helps explain why a lone fledgling like Topa Topa struggled after his first release. (fws.gov; wildlife.ca.gov) Topa Topa now lives behind the scenes at the zoo’s Condor Recovery Center, where the zoo says he is still producing chicks. Six decades after arriving as an underweight fledgling, he remains part of the same recovery program built to keep condors in the sky. (lazoo.org; ktla.com)