Taking Action to Conserve the California Condor

EDF Renewables partners with WECAT and The Peregrine Fund to help restore the endangered birds’ population

By Elise Anderson, Director, Biodiversity and Environment

With an average adult wingspan of 9.5 feet and the ability to hit speeds up to 55 mph, the California condor is one of the world’s largest birds and is sometimes mistaken for a small airplane. The majestic species once ranged across western North America from British Columbia, Canada to Baja California, Mexico.

Unfortunately, California condors experienced dramatic population declines throughout the 1900s due to human-caused sources of mortality that include illegal shooting and egg collecting, wildfires, collisions with power lines, and most significantly, lead poisoning from ammunition fragments in scavenged animal carcasses.

These losses were compounded by a very low reproduction rate – females only lay one egg at a time, because raising a baby condor is very time consuming and labor intensive, usually a couple of years apart. Chicks are incubated and raised by both parents, who take turns foraging for food and feeding the chick for the first six months until it fledges (learns to fly). After a chick fledges, the parents may continue to care for it for up to another year. If one parent dies, the remaining adult condor is likely to struggle as a single parent.

In 1967, the California condor was listed as endangered, and in 1979, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) established the California Condor Recovery Program, an international multi-entity effort that has succeeded in increasing the number of condors in the wild.

Although the population had fallen to just a few dozen condors by the late 1970s, by 2022 it climbed to 561 condors, with 347 in the wild and 214 in captivity. That’s great news for the condors, but it also increases the potential risks they face, because as their population grows and their range expands, some condors may spend more time in and around wind farms.

One area of particular focus is the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area (TWRA) in Kern County, California. The 200-square-mile TWRA lies within the condors’ current and historic territory, and it’s also home to some of the nation’s best wind resources. It hosts around 50 wind farms, which together have nearly 3,500 turbines and represent 3.3 gigawatts of generation capacity – enough to power about one million homes with clean, carbon-free electricity.

Although there are no recorded instances of a California condor being injured or killed by wind turbines in the TWRA, the possibility that one could someday be harmed by a collision with a wind turbine or wind farm-related structure is high enough that several wind facility owners and operators within the TWRA came together to proactively address it.

In 2018, EDF Renewables joined seven other companies to form the Wind Energy Condor Action Team (WECAT). WECAT in turn worked closely with USFWS to develop the Condor Conservation Plan, which addresses the increased risk of injury or mortality to California condors presented by the eight companies’ wind farms.

The Condor Conservation Plan formed the basis for an application for a collective take permit, and in June 2023, WECAT was successful in obtaining a permit from USFWS for the eight companies participating in the initiative. The permit, which covers 24 wind facilities, is the third of its type issued by the USFWS, as well as the largest.

The permit formalizes many of the voluntary activities the companies were already engaged in to reduce the risks to condors. These include monitoring to detect condors that enter the TWRA and curtailing (stopping) turbines that may be in their flight path, as well as ensuring that things like trash and animal carcasses, which attract condors, are removed within each project’s footprint.

New and additional protections, such as annual reporting, vehicle speed limits (to reduce the likelihood of hitting condors eating roadkill), and steps to reduce electrocution from power lines were also introduced.

Importantly, the permit also introduces a new form of mitigation that will fully offset any potential impacts and ultimately provide a net benefit to the species: under the permit, WECAT participants will provide more than $6 million to The Peregrine Fund for the breeding, rearing, and release into the wild of more than 30 condors over the next 15 years.

Overall, the collective take permit offers robust protection for both California condors as well as clean energy companies. In total, WECAT anticipates spending $11.4 million on a variety of conservation activities such as those described above. In exchange, the 30-year permit gives the companies legal protection under the federal Endangered Species Act in the event that a wind turbine at any of the 24 facilities causes the accidental death or loss of up to 11 free-flying condors, as well as 11 chicks or eggs.

Condor conservation is one of the most exciting and rewarding projects I work on, and in December 2023 I had the opportunity to represent EDF Renewables on a visit to a future release site at the Navajo Bridge in Arizona for condors reared in captivity.

I’m proud of the role EDF Renewables has played in helping WECAT and USFWS increase protection for this iconic species. We expect the Peregrine Fund to release the first young condors raised with WECAT funding in the fall of 2024, and along with many of my wind industry and conservation colleagues, I’m looking forward to seeing them soar!

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