Last month, a California condor flew into Oregon before returning after several hundred miles to its home in Redwoods National Park, becoming the first condor recorded in the state since 1904.
Taking a closer look, condor conservationists among northern California’s Yurok tribe concluded it was condor B9, an animal that had been born in captivity and released into the wild in 2022 by the Yurok.
The animal flew a grand total of 380 miles and 4 days in a loop, starting high in the redwoods before passing Redding in NoCal and then entering Oregon. It made stops near Medford, Cave Junction, and Brookings before recrossing state lines and returning to the national park.
Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams Claussen told the Oregon Organization for Public Broadcasting that B9 is an especially curious bird.
“She flew almost 100 miles per day,” Williams Claussen said, ”which means she was really utilizing the landscape the way that only a condor can, really taking advantage of those mountains and riverways that give good flight corridors.”
These Critically-Endangered birds have proven to be one of the toughest jobs humanity has seen attempting to undue the damage their species caused on another. From the 1980s, when the last 22 wild birds were captured and placed in a breeding program, to 2016 when more animals were born in the wild than died there, the population had only increased to 276 wild individuals.
Encouraging milestones come more often these days, however, and indeed the Redwoods population made such mini-history when in February, a female laid an egg in the hollow of a redwood tree in a remote corner of the park.
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Though it failed to hatch, it was the first time that had happened in over 100 years. Williams Claussen was nevertheless encouraged after it was gradually understood that the egg failed.
“Even with the egg loss, that was still a really amazing milestone for us,” she said. “It’s pretty common that eggs will fail in that first year, as these naive parents are really figuring it out.”
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