The Association of Zoos and Aquariums recently announced that the Los Angeles Zoo received the association’s 2017 North American Conservation Award for its California Condor Bi-national Recovery and Reintroduction Program.

photo by Tad Motoyama

“We are very proud and honored to be recognized with this prestigious award,” said Los Angeles Zoo Director John Lewis. “California condors represent a classic example of modern zoos’ commitment to conserving species at risk.”

The annual award recognizes exceptional efforts toward regional habitat preservation, species restoration and support of biodiversity in the wild. For the first time, top winners in the North American Conservation category also received $25,000 to support initiatives through support from the Arthur L. and Elaine V. Johnson Foundation.

“This award highlights the crucial work aquariums and zoos are doing to help save threatened and endangered animals within our own backyards,” said AZA President and CEO Dan Ashe. “The team at Los Angeles Zoo and their partners are leaders in conserving North American wildlife, protecting California condors and our natural heritage through the Bi-national Recovery and Reintroduction Program. They are saving animals from extinction.”

In the early 1980s, scientists counted only 22 California condors left in the world. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego Zoo Global to help safeguard the species to save it from imminent extinction. All remaining wild condors were brought to the two zoos, causing the species to be extinct in the wild for the first time in its 10,000-year history.

Over the next three decades, the program’s partners — including the Oregon Zoo, Santa Barbara Zoo, Oakland Zoo, Phoenix Zoo and Chapultepec Zoo, non-governmental organizations and U.S. and Mexican wildlife officials — worked to increase the numbers of condors, release them back into their ancestral habitat and monitor and manage the population in zoos and the wild. There are now more than 450 condors, with 275 living in the wild in California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, Mexico.

The Los Angeles Zoo is located at 5333 Zoo Drive. In Griffith Park. For information, call (323)644-4200, or visit lazoo.org.