Baby condor named wayra offers hope for colombia’s endangered giant birds through artificial breeding program

In a quiet backroom of a nature reserve outside Bogotá, a tiny ball of gray fluff represents enormous hope for one of South America’s most magnificent birds. Wayra, a recently hatched Andean condor chick, is the latest success story from an artificial incubation program that’s racing against time to save Colombia’s dwindling condor population.

The innovative breeding initiative, run by the Jaime Duque Park Foundation at a theme park just 30 minutes from Colombia’s capital, is accelerating nature’s timeline. By using artificial incubation techniques, conservationists can breed these massive birds—the largest flying species in the Americas—much faster than they would reproduce in the wild. For wildlife specialist Fernando Castro, 33, each new chick like Wayra represents the future of the Andean condor in Colombia.

The need for such intervention is urgent. Over the past two centuries, Andean condor populations have plummeted across their seven-country range spanning Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. The decline accelerated dramatically in the 20th century when highland settlers killed the scavenging birds, mistakenly blaming them for livestock deaths. Habitat destruction and lead poisoning from ammunition in animal carcasses have further devastated their numbers.

Today, the IUCN Red List classifies the Andean condor as vulnerable to extinction, with only about 6,700 individuals remaining worldwide as of 2020. The situation is particularly dire in some countries—Venezuela’s population is believed to be locally extinct. Programs like the one nurturing Wayra offer a critical lifeline for these iconic birds soaring back from the brink.