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Mary Coolidge – The California Condor Recovery Program at Portland Zoo
June 10, 2021 @ 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Mary served as Portland Audubon’s Assistant Conservation Director from 2008-2012 and currently coordinates the BirdSafe and Non-lead Campaigns. She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Lewis & Clark College in 1997 and spent a decade studying a wide array of bird species in both urban and rural environment. She has also been a Zookeeper at the Oregon Zoo’s California Condor breeding facility since 2015.
The Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation at the Oregon Zoo is one of five propagation facilities that captively rear California condors for supplementation of the free-flying population. This network of captive rearing programs has been instrumental in increasing the wild population via release and monitoring of birds in Southern California, Arizona and Baja. An exciting new phase has recently begun with the approval of a release site in Northern California, which is proposed to be functioning as soon as fall 2021.
Mary will discuss the current status of this critically endangered species, the function of the Jonsson breeding facility, as well as lead ammunition and other impediments to the establishment of a self-sustaining wild population.