Condor at LA Zoo Turns 60
- A condor that aided species conservation celebrates 60 years at Los Angeles Zoo. - Arrived weak 60 years ago, now key to saving his species. - Milestone highlights successful wildlife recovery efforts at LA Zoo (patch.com).
A California condor at the Los Angeles Zoo has turned 60, making Topa Topa the oldest known bird of his species. (lazoo.org) The zoo said Topa Topa arrived in 1967 after Fred Sibley of the newly established U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Program and John Boreman of the Audubon Society found him weak, malnourished and weighing 17 pounds in Ventura County. Zoo staff rehabilitated the roughly one-year-old fledgling for 10 days and returned him to the wild, but observers soon saw he could not forage or defend himself on his own. (lazoo.org) He later became the first California condor to live in a zoo and a founding member of the federal California Condor Recovery Program. The Los Angeles Zoo said his lineage now includes about 300 birds, with 100 in the recovery program and 94 flying free in the wild. (lazoo.org) California condors are North America’s largest land birds, with a wingspan of 9.5 feet and a weight of up to 25 pounds. By 1967, the species had fallen so far that the federal government listed it as endangered. (fws.gov) The population crashed again in the 1980s. The Los Angeles Zoo says the last wild condor was brought into human care in 1987, leaving 27 birds for a breeding and reintroduction effort run with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the San Diego Zoo. (lazoo.org) That captive-breeding push changed the numbers. The Los Angeles Zoo says the program has grown the population to more than 500 birds, and about 300 condors bred in human care have been released to the wild since reintroductions began in 1992. (lazoo.org) The recovery effort is still active across the West and in Mexico. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the program now works to build self-sustaining condor populations through a partnership of federal, state, tribal and nonprofit groups, with captive breeding at the Los Angeles Zoo among the core pieces. (fws.gov; fws.gov) The Los Angeles Zoo’s breeding work has continued in recent years. The zoo reported a record 17 condor chicks hatched there in 2024, then 10 more healthy chicks in the 2025 season, all candidates for release into the wild. (lazoo.org; lazoo.org) At 60, Topa Topa now stands as a living link between the species’ near-collapse and its long recovery effort at the Los Angeles Zoo. (lazoo.org)
