Endangered Bird Will Soon Soar Over Its Ancestral Land

After more than a decade of dedicated efforts to reintroduce the condor, the Yurok Tribe will see the endangered bird return to their ancestral land in northern California, United States, bringing a sense of renewal for both people and the land.

“When I actually see a condor in the sky again,” says Tiana Williams-Claussen, the director of Yurok Tribe’s wildlife department, “it’s just mending that wound that was carried by my elders, is carried by me and that, at least in part, is not going to be carried by my children.”

In the early 1980s, with only 22 free-flying condors in southern and central California, a breeding program was set up. Today, more than 300 of the large vultures soar in Utah, Arizona, and Baja California, in Mexico. Thanks to the Yurok Tribe’s proposal to set up a captive breeding facility with the boundaries of the Redwood national park, the former home of the condor, the northern part of California should see condors in the wild as early as this fall. The scavenger species plays an important role as part of a healthy and balanced ecosystem.