Wildlife officials are teaming up with the Yurok Tribe on a plan to re-introduce the critically endangered birds to the wild.
If you want to see a condor in Oregon today, you can view captive ones at the Oregon Zoo. But there is a plan to have them soar free through Oregon skies again.
Travis Koons with the Oregon Zoo said, “This is a fantastic return to what’s natural, what’s normal, and I think a lot of folks that live in this area have that mindset.”
Federal and tribal officials want to reintroduce California condors to Redwood National Park, just south of the state line.
Paul Henson with the U.S. Department Fish & Wildlife Service said, “We expect condors to be in Oregon, along the Oregon Coast, and then up into the southern part of the state probably within the first year or two of reintroduction.”
The response was mostly positive at public meeting at the zoo. It’s a chance to bring a bird once on the brink of extinction back to its native range.
“If the right resources are put into place,” Koons explained, “then you can recover a species to the point where they’re now flying free in pretty large numbers.”
By 1987, there were only 22 California condors left in the wild. They were all taken captive to participate in a breeding program in an effort to save the species.
There are now 500 of the birds in captivity and the wild.
They are the largest land bird in America, and the native Yurok people consider them a sacred animal.
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