condors

The California condor is listed as "Critically Endangered." Pacific Southwest Region USFWS, Flickr Creative Commons

A Second California Condor Comeback is on the Horizon

by Madeleine Turner on

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.”

An endangered California condor keeps protective watch over its chick in a nesting cave. Photo: John Brandt/USFWS

Condor Chick Signals Hope for the Future

by Madeleine Turner on

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.