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Despite the federal government shutdown, now in its third week, Ventana Wildlife Society continues monitoring the California condor Central Coast flock as biologists at Pinnacles National Park remain furloughed.
According to Ventana’s website, the Central Coast population stands at 108 and the global wild population stands at 364.
Executive Director Kelly Sorenson told BenitoLink the nonprofit continues to do daily monitoring and many of the Pinnacles-managed condors have GPS units that Ventana is tracking.
Both agencies work together to monitor the flock because some birds are managed by Ventana and others by Pinnacles, depending on where they hatched or were released. The streaming cameras are working so they can monitor through that access too. Kelly said what Ventana doesn’t have is Pinnacles’ “boots on the ground.”
The information from all condor recovery sites goes to a central database that has more than 55 million data points.
“It is perhaps one of the most closely monitored species on earth right now,” Kelly said.
Despite that, Ventana lost grant funding provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which notified the nonprofit it would not renew a grant they have received for several years. According to their 2023 annual report, the most recent financial data, the nonprofit received $715,000 from government grants.
Ventana is hoping the public will respond with donations.
Other condor recovery sites not operated by federal government agencies are Grand Canyon National Park, which is run by the Peregrine fund, the Sierra San Pedro de Martir National Park in Baja California, Mexico, and the Northern California Condor Restoration Program, which is run in part by the Yurok Tribe.
Other endangered species recovery programs run by federal agencies such as the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service are stalled, as agencies have furloughed most of their staff.
“Hopefully the shutdown will end soon, but there seems to be no end in sight,” said Kelly.
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