Oil prices were skyrocketing. Gerald Ford was stepping into Spiro Agnew’s tarnished VP shoes. The Exorcist was nominated for Best Picture. Such was the national landscape on December 28, 1973, when President Richard Nixon signed one of the country’s most …
Next time you visit Redwood National and State Parks, you may see California condors taking flight among the redwoods. California condors, magnificent creatures that have been absent from this area for more than a century, were nearly extinct by the 1980s. Thanks to a monumental conservation effort and successful captive breeding program, there are now wild condor populations in Central and Southern California, Arizona, and Baja Mexico. Now, condors may even be returning to Northern California skies.
Federal agencies and the Yurok Tribe have partnered to reintroduce California condors to Redwood National and State Parks. Before too long, visitors to Redwood National and State Parks may spy the condors, which have been missing from the area for more than 100 years.
California condors have been absent from the Pacific Northwest for over a century. But the Yurok tribe — whose ancestors lived along the Klamath River in Northern California — still revere and celebrate them. The sight of a condor flying over the redwoods has been erased from living memory, and, as tribe chairman Thomas P. O’Rourke told Audubon last March, “His absence is a hole in our hearts.”
This summer proved to be momentous for the recovery of the California condor. Joe Burnett and Amy List, biologists at Ventana Wildlife Society, located the nest of two condors, #538 and #574, inside a hollowed-out coast redwood in Big Sur. Over the years Burnett watched these two birds, nicknamed Miracle and Nomad, as they fledged and grew up in the wild. Now, they’re raising their own chick — the first chick, since the 1980s, born to parents who were not raised in captivity.
After disappearing from the Pacific Northwest over a century ago, wild California condors may once again find ample nesting, breeding, and foraging habitat in the redwood range.
Cleanup of a remote property that Save the Redwoods League purchased has protected endangered California condors, thanks to our members.
All gifts matched up to $100,000 for ‘O Rew Redwoods Gateway!
