(KERO) — Federal wildlife authorities will take an unusual step in helping a wind energy company breed endangered California condors to replace the ones that have been killed by wind turbines.
The energy company Avangrid's proposed mitigation project predicts that up to two adult condors and each of their two chicks or two eggs will die by a fatal injury over a 30-year period. The plan calls for providing over $500,000 over three years to produce six condors at the Oregon Zoo's Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation. That facility is one of four that raise captive-bred condors to increase the size of the free-flying population.
Meanwhile, wildlife officials say they tracked a GPS collared wolf for hundreds of miles from Oregon into California.
They refer to the gray wolf as OR-93 and say he left his pack and traveled to the Central Sierra Nevada. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs added a tracking collar to OR-93 in June 2020.
According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the wolf has traveled farther south in California than the collared wolves before him. OR-93 is the 16th gray wolf recorded to have traveled into the state most of which have come from Oregon.
