The Andean condor is one of the world's largest flying birds and a critically important scavenger in South American ecosystems. Captive breeding and release programs have prevented extinction of wild populations.
Andean condor welfare in captive breeding programs requires balancing human contact minimization — to prevent imprinting that would prevent release — with the intensive care needed to raise chicks successfully. Condor chick puppet feeding (using hand puppets resembling adult condors) prevents human imprinting while allowing artificial incubation and rearing. Adult breeding birds require very large flight aviaries enabling normal wing use and social behavior. Lead poisoning from ingesting carcasses shot with lead ammunition remains the primary threat to released birds — monitoring programs use satellite transmitters to track post-release survival and identify mortality causes. Released condors learning scavenging skills from wild individuals have higher survival than those released without mentor birds.