Migratory waterfowl are now the primary epizootic vector for HPAI/H5N1 viral incubation and dispersal along the North American Pacific Flywayall California condor nesting & release sites lie directly in their path (Ramey (2022)).
In 1982 California condors went extinct in the wild and only (22) twenty-two remained alive in captivity (Robinson et al. (2021, 2939)). According to (2021), ``endangered species frequently suffer from a lack of genetic diversity, potentially leading to inbreeding depression and reduced adaptability”[-Robinson et al. (2021)).
The California condor has 40 pairs of chromosomes (compared to 23
pairs for humans) and the California condor’s fully-sequenced genome
prepared by Robinson et al.
(2021) in their Robinson et al. (2021) complete &
contiguous rendering of the California condor genome by means of a
high-quality"\footnote{\citeauthor{RobCB31} useda long read
chromatin mapping interaction mapping chromosome-length assembly (Hi-C)
method” to fully and contiguously sequence the genome
.} sequencing method which revealed the California condor
shares a common ancestor with the American poultry-farmed chicken whose
genetic divergence occurred
70 million years before present
.