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The carrion-eating Andean condor, the largest flying bird in the world, once clouded the skies from Venezuela to Patagonia along South America’s Andes Mountains. In a hundred years, hunters, pollution and habitat destruction wiped out most of these soaring birds, which help clear the environment of carcasses and accompanying diseases. This map shows the present range of the Andean condors and where they once lived. The Andean condor is silent. It utters wheezes, suppressed co…

…s rheumatism, that is stomach cures, breast cancer, that the eye-roasted and eaten-sharpens sight, and that placing its feathers under the blanket wards off nightmares. The Andean condor is considered ‘critically imperilled’ in Northern Ecuador, where they live in habitat known as ‘paramo’. Generally restricted to above 3000m, this habitat is under pressure from agriculture and tourism. The condor population in that area appears to be in decline cause of low reproductive rates. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**