California Condors at Risk from West Nile Virus

That’s the conclusion reached by Sabin Russell, the medical writer for the San Francisco Chronical, in this feature article. Sure, condors are especially vulnerable because of their incredibly small population size, but birds in captive facilities are probably much more at risk than wild birds, which generally inhabit fairly arid environments that I doubt would be conducive to harboring large mosquito populations. As you can tell, I remain skeptical. I will admit, however, that we need to take precautionary measures to protect endangered species such as the California Condor from undue exposure to the West Nile Virus.