CONDORS TAKE FLIGHT
Tuesday morning marked a major milestone for endangered species reintroduction efforts, as the long-absent California condor took to the North Coast's skies for the first time in more than a century.
Two condors were successfully released from a management facility inside the Redwoods State and National Parks after spending weeks at the facility under the watch of biologists from the Yurok Tribe and the regional parks. The project received funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other entities and hopes to reintroduce condors to Northern California and southern Oregon to create a self-sustaining population.
The species plays a key role in the ecosystem by eating carrion and pecking off other animals with larger, harder bones that competitive scavengers, like turkey vultures and smaller organisms, cannot break into. It is
the avian species with the largest wingspan in North America, reaching nearly 10 feet in length.
For the Yurok, who call the species prey-go-neesh in the Yurok language, the condor is a species of great cultural significance and represents the spirit of renewal.
“For countless generations, the Yurok people have upheld a sacred responsibility to maintain balance in the natural
world. Condor reintroduction is a real-life manifestation of our cultural commitment to restore and protect the planet for future generations,” Yurok chairman Joseph L. James said in a prepared statement ahead of the release. “On behalf of the Yurok Tribe, I would like to thank all of the individuals, agencies and organizations that helped us prepare to welcome prey-goneesh back to our homeland.”
The tribe and representatives from the parks, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service anticipated the then imminent release during in mid-april, with no date specified at the time of the announcement.
The Yurok Tribe broadcast the release through a Facebook livestream that featured a direct feed of the management enclosure and informational commentary from tribal member and tribal wildlife head department Tiana Williams-claussen.
“Our partnership with the Redwoods State and National Parks has been very strong from the beginning,” Williamsclaussen said. “Now the 14 years of work that went into this has come to this point.”
Around 10:15 a.m., the condors labeled A2 and A3, both male juveniles, left their enclosure through a staging area leading to the open world. The birds had to first step into the staging zone before the second opening leading outdoors was allowed to open.
Williams-claussen, who has
spent her professional life working on reintroduction efforts, was eager to see the two juveniles take flight.
“That was just as exciting as I thought it was going to be. … They just jumped up and flew into the distance,” she said before thanking the many stakeholders and collaborators who made the reintroduction efforts possible.
California condors have faced threats since the mid-1800s, when westward settlers began to arrive in Humboldt County. The birds were hunted by settlers for sport, display
and out of unfounded fear the large, carrion-scavenger species would take away cattle and children. The use of lead ammunition in hunting and the widespread use of the now-banned pesticide DDT played a role in diminishing the species' numbers in the wild. The condor was reportedly last seen in the park and surrounding areas around 1892.
At its lowest point in the 1980s, it is believed only 22 California condors remained in the wild, mostly concentrated in the central California highlands despite having an original habitat ranging from British Columbia, Canada down to Baja California, Mexico.
The next two condors set
for release, one of which is a female, will be let out once the reintroduction team determines Tuesday's released condors are displaying appropriate behavior.
The Associated Press reports two of the four condors in the monitoring enclosure were hatched at the Oregon Zoo and the other two at the Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey in Idaho.
Two years ago, California condors were spotted in Sequoia National Park, in California's Sierra Nevada, for the first time in nearly 50 years. However, that same year, a dozen adults and two chicks died when a wildfire ravaged the territory on the Big Sur coast.