The majestic California condors have returned to their habitat in Yurok Tribal lands for the first time in 130 years after being raised at a restoration program in Northern California.
The animals were released on Tuesday morning, and the event was live-streamed from the Yurok Tribe and Redwood National and State Parks at 8 a.m.
However, the birds didn’t quite get the memo that they were being released, as it took them some time to wake up and take flight, but they eventually did.
The stream was narrated by Yurok citizen and Yurok Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams-Claussen, who was ecstatic with their release.
“I am just overjoyed on this day,” Wiliams-Claussen said.
Paul Souza, the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Southwest region, shared in a statement that this is a “monumental moment.”
In total, there were four birds released, three males and one female. The birds were raised at a facility in Idaho and transferred to the Northern California Condor Restoration Program located near the Klamath River in September. Two more are set to take flight at a later date, the tribe reported.
But on Tuesday, after sleeping through their morning call time, the birds eventually woke up and had a bite to eat — which was a dead carcass — and then moved into their final staging area before spreading their almost 10-foot wings and taking flight.
“That was just as exciting as I thought it would be,” Williams-Claussen said after they flew off. “Those guys just took off.”
The Endangered Species Act currently classifies condors as a nonessential, experimental population. They have been reintroduced to the wild throughout the U.S., including some in Arizona.
In a statement, Williams-Clausen shared that this release comes after a decade-plus of work, and now the work is paying off, the LA Times reported.
“We’ve been working toward these releases for 14 years,” Williams-Claussen said in a statement. “Now, the condor is coming home.”
The birds will still be monitored by biologists to make sure they adapt to their new surroundings as they are the product of almost three decades of captive breeding. The work is an effort to rescue the California condor from extinction.
“This effort builds upon the program’s collective knowledge and history of releasing condors and showcases the benefit of partnering with Tribes and others to implement recovery of listed species,” Souza said. “We are proud to support this collaborative to implement recovery of listed species.”
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