As of today, anyone with Internet access can watch nesting California condors raise their baby chicks on a live-streaming webcam of a condor nest near Ventura County’s Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge. Check out the stream here .
In addition to raising community awareness about the endangered birds, which almost became extinct in the 1980s, biologists at the Santa Barbara Zoo will use the video as a tool to monitor growing chicks.
The idea was conceived in 2010 by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees after a condor nest failed because of an injured chick. Since then, conservationists in both the Ventura and Big Sur areas have worked to install two real-time cameras, the Southern California camera as well as another camera in the Ventana Wildlife Society’s Condor Sanctuary in Big Sur.