Bringing Back the Continent’s Largest Bird

Decades of binational collaboration have led to the reintroduction and growing population of the California condor.

“If science wasn’t behind the reintroduction and recovery program it would have been very complicated, not only to understand what the most important hazards are that are affecting condor reproduction and survival, but also to do the management at the breeding centers and in the wild,” says Cynthia Steiner, associate director of the Genetic Conservation Biology Laboratory at the Beckman Center for Conservation Research.

By the late 1980s, the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) population had disappeared from the skies of North America primarily due to eating the meat of animals shot by hunters’ lead bullets. A decision was made to put the remaining two dozen condors in captivity in the hopes they could save their lineage. A captive breeding program began the same day the California condor was officially declared extinct in the wild. The researchers were cautious and pragmatic, eventually releasing the first captive-bred condors. By 2023, the global population of California condors had reached 561 individuals, 344 of which are living in the wild, in a promising comeback.