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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 55 / Wednesday, March 24, 2021 / Rules and Regulations Demography and Threats California condors are long-lived birds. In captivity, they can live more than 50 years. Average age of first breeding is 8 years and 6 months for females and 9 years and 10 months for males Mace 2017, pp. 240, 243. The oldest known breeding female was 38
years old Mace 2017, p. 239.
Slow maturation and low reproductive rates in California condors mean that low mortality rates are necessary for populations to be stable or to grow Mertz 1971, p. 448; Verner 1978, pp. 1921; Meretsky et al. 2000, pp. 960961. Demographic models indicate that annual adult mortality rates certainly must average <10 percent annually to achieve stable or increasing populations Verner 1978, pp. 1921;
Meretsky et al. 2000, p. 961, and likely need to be <5 percent Meretsky et al.
2000, p. 961; Cade 2007, p. 2129; Woods et al. 2007, p. 65; Walters et al. 2010, p.
974. Estimates of mortality rates in the first decade of the release program in California and Arizonawhen individuals treated for lead poisoning were considered mortalitieswere between 1735 percent, greatly exceeding the mortality rates needed for a self-sustaining stable population Meretsky et al. 2000, p. 963. Currently, populations in the wild are only viable as a result of augmentation through ongoing captive-breeding and release efforts, in concert with intensive monitoring and management to reduce mortality Green et al. 2008; Finkelstein et al. 2012, p. 11452; USFWS 2013, pp.
2730.
The primary threat to the viability of the California condor is lead poisoning from spent ammunition left in gut-piles or carcasses of animals that condors feed upon Meretsky et al. 2000, p. 963;
Church et al. 2006, p. 6148; Cade 2007, entire; Woods et al. 2007, pp. 7375;
Green et al. 2008, p. 9; Walters et al.
2010, pp. 993994; Finkelstein et al.
2012, pp. 1145211453; Rideout et al.
2012, pp. 108109; Kelly et al. 2015, pp.
395398; Bakker et al. 2017, pp. 101
103. Without intensive management of the impacts from this threat, which includes periodic trapping for health exams, monitoring blood lead levels, and treatment if necessary, the wild populations would trend toward extinction Woods et al. 2007, p. 65;
Green et al. 2008, pp. 89; Walters et al.
2010, pp. 993994; Finkelstein et al.
2012, pp. 1145211453. In the absence of this threat, California condor populations would likely grow and become self-sustaining, without the need for intensive management Woods et al. 2007, p. 65; Green et al. 2008, p.

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9; Finkelstein et al. 2012, pp. 11452
11453.
Several laws and voluntary programs to reduce the threat from lead ammunition have been enacted. The State of California instituted a restriction on the use of lead ammunition for hunting within the range of the California condor in southern and central California in July 2008 Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act 2008, entire. The geographic and regulatory scope of this restriction was expanded with Assembly Bill 711
AB711 that was signed into law in October 2013. AB711 amended section 3004.5 of the California Fish and Game Code, relating to hunting. The law, which restricts the use of lead ammunition for taking wildlife, has been phased in; the final phase, which went into effect in July 2019, enacted a State-wide ban of lead ammunition for all take of wildlife. Nevada also has a regulation mandating the use of nontoxic shot on all Nevada Wildlife Management Areas NAC 503.183. In addition to these laws and regulations, voluntary lead-reduction programs are in place in California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. While these voluntary programs vary by State, actions under these programs have included: 1 Surveys to understand attitudes toward lead reduction; 2
outreach to hunters at sportsman shows, hunter education classes, and in the field; 3 coordination with hunter constituency groups; and 4 targeted vouchers for free non-lead ammunition Sieg et al. 2009, pp. 344345; Chase and Rabe 2015, pp. 23; AGFD 2017, web page, UDWR 2017, web page, ODFW 2017, web page;
Huntingwithnonlead.org 2017, web page; nonleadpartnership.org, web page.
Other threats to California condors include: Rangeland conversion, wind energy development, collision with and electrocution from powerlines, predation, disease, inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms, shooting, microtrash ingestion, pesticides, and habituation to humans.
A full description of these threats, and efforts to abate them, are provided in our most recent status review for the California condor USFWS 2013, entire.
Relationship of NEP to Recovery Efforts We published a California condor recovery plan in 1974 USFWS 1975, entire, and revised the plan in 1980
USFWS 1980, entire, 1984 USFWS
1984, entire, and 1996 USFWS 1996, entire. To date, recovery efforts have focused on reintroduction and recovery in the southern portion of the species
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historical range see Captive Breeding and Reintroduction Efforts, above.
Recovery criteria for removing the California condor from the endangered species list were not provided in the 1996 revision to the recovery plan, as its primary focus was keeping the species from going extinct. At the time the 1996
revised recovery plan was written, there were only 17 California condors in the wild USFWS 1996, p. 9 and we could not anticipate at that time all actions that would be necessary for full recovery. We recently clarified why it remains impracticable to incorporate delisting criteria for the California condor in the recovery plan USFWS
2019b. The overall strategy for recovery outlined in the 1996 recovery plan was to focus on: 1 Increasing reproduction in captivity to provide condors for release, 2 the release of condors to the wild, 3 minimizing condor mortality rates, 4 maintaining habitat for condor recovery, and 5 implementing condor information and education programs USFWS 1996, p. 21. While the recovery plan did not have delisting criteria, it included as criteria for reclassifying or downlisting to a threatened species an objective of establishing at least two, preferably more, self-sustaining disjunct wild populations in order to reduce the risks to the overall population and to facilitate genetic and demographic management USFWS 1996, p. 24.
The 1996 revised recovery plan does not provide specific recovery targets or actions for the Pacific Northwest, but our 1980 recovery plan recommended surveys of Oregon, Washington, and California to identify potential habitat for future releases into unoccupied portions of the historical range USFWS
1980, p. 50. Recent habitat modeling has revealed large areas of potentially suitable nesting, roosting, and feeding habitats in the Pacific Northwest DElia et al. 2015, pp. 9596. Although criteria for full recovery were not provided in our latest recovery plan revision USFWS 1996, entire, increasing the global population of the California condor and expanding its geographic distribution among the ecosystems it once occupied are, on first principles, consistent with efforts to recover the species.
An existing population model based on published demographic rates Bakker et al. 2017, entire was used to simulate statewide California condor population growth in California over the next 30
years 20182048, assessing scenarios with and without the allocation of some of the available captive-bred individuals to a new geographically disjunct flock Bakker and Finkelstein 2018, entire.

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