Once extinct in the wild, over 300 California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) now make up five distinct and intensively managed subpopulations in California, Arizona, and Baja, Mexico. All five flocks are managed by multiple agencies, creating the need for standardization and collaboration among federal, non-profit, tribal, and international partners. To meet this need and increase efficiency in the management of this critically endangered species, Ventana Wildlife Society’s Senior Software Engineer Tim Huntington developed the CACO Central application. Field data related to movements, nesting, handling, and much more is uploaded to the application in real-time by biologists, and is consolidated in one location, allowing for easy access and more effective responses by field teams. By regularly compiling and pre-processing millions of condor GPS locations, CACO Central reduces this workload for biologists, enabling them to focus instead on using GPS data to inform management decisions. The standardization of data formatting across all flocks and monitoring agencies has also increased efficiency in broader-scale research projects involving condors. While some features of CACO Central are specific to condors, many of its core functions can and should be applied to a wide variety of species and monitoring projects in the ornithological field and beyond.

Danaé graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Biology in 2017. She first fell in love with Condors while working at Pinnacles National Park in 2019, and joined the Ventana Wildlife Society as a Biologist in 2021. Danaé began her wildlife career working with carnivores in Arizona and Idaho, and became fascinated by birds after spending a season bird banding in Nova Scotia, Canada. Since then, she has been involved in several endangered species monitoring projects including Snail Kites in Florida, Northern Spotted Owls in Marin county, California, and now California Condors in central California.