PRINTMAKING
Zach is the printmaker in the family but I’ve been exploring a bit and made a California Condor recently. I am very inspired by the conservation story of the California Condor, a species with up to 10ft wingspan that historically ranged from California to Florida and western Canada to northern Mexico but by the mid-20th century, their populations had dropped dramatically due to human factors. In 1987 there were only 22 condors left on earth. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made the controversial decision to capture the remaining condors in the wild to breed them in captivity. After many years of captive breeding using a technique to have the condors lay two or potentially three eggs versus their normal one egg, different populations were successfully released back into the wild. Today, the Fish and Wildlife Service and its public and private partners have grown the total wild free-flying condor population to more than 300 condors. In 2004, the Recovery Program reached an important milestone with the first successful chick hatched in the wild. In 2008, another major milestone was reach when more condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity for the first time since the program began. Today about 560 condors exist on earth.
