Many ranchers across the region coat livestock carcasses in illegal organophosphate pesticides and other chemicals to ward off potential predators like pumas, foxes and feral dogs. Most concerningly, there have been several mass poisonings reported in the last few years. Poisoning (both intentional and accidental) is at the top of the list, but condors are also being affected by habitat loss, illegal hunting and wildlife trade, competition for food from feral dog populations and collisions with energy infrastructure. But humans are ruining its natural ‘live slow, die old’ life strategy, causing high death rates from which it is hard to recover,” says Ian Davidson, our Director in the Americas.įor anyone who has been following our coverage of the vulture crises affecting Asia, Europe and Africa, the threats facing condors will no doubt sound eerily familiar. There are fears that the species is now extinct in Venezuela, and there are only around 7,000 adults left across its range. While the number of Condors is decreasing across the entire continent, populations are smallest in the northern part of their range. If we don’t act soon, these majestic birds, who are so much a part of the Andean landscape, might be lost forever. Unfortunately, our recent Red List update shows that the fate of the Condor across its entire range is looking increasingly bleak. Like seeing the Andes for the first time, witnessing an Andean Condor Vultur gryphus in its natural habitat is a breath-taking experience. If you’re really lucky, you might get to see them on the ground, hopping around a guanaco carcass, their intelligent and surprisingly handsome bald faces poking up above their feathery shoulders. But perhaps most striking of all, the condors, soaring high above you, circling for carrion. In the distance, Patagonian foxes sniff the air intently in search of their next snack, and pumas silently stalk. ![]() ![]() Guanacos (a close relation to llamas) grazing, skittish rheas with their young trailing behind them in an orderly line, scaly armadillos vacuuming insects from the ground. Grassy, dry, treeless plains that stretch for miles, until they hit the Andes, which seem to appear out of nowhere and take your breath away with their craggy, snowy peaks.įinally, there is the wildlife. First the wind, vicious and constant, which blows your glasses off your face, the hat off your head and, if you’re not careful, blowing you off the narrow path you happen to be walking along. There are many things that assault your senses when you visit Southern Patagonia.
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