After a century,
the condor may soon return to Yurok land
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A
juvenile California condor in Big Sur. Wollertz / Shutterstock
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In Yurok tradition, the condor is sacred.
The Plight of the Condor
In 1979, when there were 25 to 35 condors
in the wild and one in captivity, a Cooperative California
Condor Conservation Program was formed.
From 1980 to 1987, field investigations
and management programs were undertaken, including radio telemetry
studies of birds and captive incubation of wild-collected
eggs.
By 1982, there were 22 California condors
left in the world.
The last wild condor was brought into
captivity in 1987.
The first California condor chick hatched
in captivity was born the next year.
From 1989 to 1991, female Andean condors
were released and studied to assess reintroduction techniques.
In 1992, two of the captive-bred California
condors were released in Ventura County.
A third condor breeding center was
established at the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise,
Idaho, the next year.
By 1994, captive condors had laid more
than 100 eggs.
In 2003, a fourth condor breeding center
was established at the Oregon Zoo's Jonsson Center for Wildlife
Conservation in Clackamas County, Oregon.
Releases began in Santa Barbara County
in late 1993, followed by more in San Luis Obispo County and
northern Arizona in 1996, then Monterey County beginning in
1997, Baja Mexico in 2002 and San Benito County in 2003.
The first nesting by free flying condors
in central California in more than 100 years was documented
in 2006 when a pair in Big Sur was found nesting in the burned-out
cavity of a redwood tree.
The condor population (wild and captive)
increased to more than 460 in 2017 (with 170 wild condors
in California).
In 2020, the Yurok Tribe is hoping
to release the first condors back into Humboldt County after
an absence of more than a century.
Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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Considered to be among Earth's first creatures and the one that
carries their prayers to the Creator, the tribe's connection with
the bird they call prey-go-neesh goes back to the beginning of time.
The condor also plays an integral role in the Yurok World Renewal
dances the White Deer Skin Dance and the Jump Dance
joining in the ceremonies that bring balance to the world through
the gift of their feathers that are used for the dancers' regalia.
But more than a century has passed since the last known condors
soared over the Yuroks' ancestral lands, meaning entire generations
of elders have lived and died without ever seeing the majestic birds
fly overhead.
That may change very soon, with the tribe on the brink of bringing
the prey-go-neesh back home.
"In a very real way, in bringing the condor back to Yurok territory,
we're not only physically restoring our world, we are culturally
and spiritually restoring our world," says Tianna Williams-Claussen,
a tribal member and wildlife biologist who has been working on the
recovery project since its inception more than a decade ago.
Rooted in the Yurok Constitution's principles to "preserve and
promote" the tribe's culture, language and religious beliefs, as
well as restoring their land's natural resources, Williams-Claussen
says a council of elders identified the condor as the first and
most important terrestrial species to bring back.
"The condor was really the birth of the wildlife program for the
Yurok Tribe," she says.
Still teetering on the edge of extinction, the birds were last
seen in the region around the turn of the 20th century, decimated
by settlers who poisoned and shot the condors, as well as depleted
their food supply by overhunting the game and marine mammals on
which they depended.
By 1982, only 22 remained in a small pocket of mountainous area
in Southern California. Five years later, the last of the wild condors
were placed into captive breeding programs in a race against time
to save the largest bird in North America.
Over the intervening years, the California Condor Recovery Program
has seen many success stories. From those handful of birds, there
are now close to 500 and release sites are operating in California
including Big Sur and Pinnacles as well as Arizona
and Baja California, Mexico. But the species remains vulnerable.
The Redwood National Park location spearheaded by the Yurok Tribe
would be the first effort to bring the endangered birds back to
the northern reaches of its historic range, which once stretched
to the Canadian border and east to Utah, Montana and Colorado.
Williams-Claussen says the hope is the release site slated for
the Bald Hills area will act as a "gateway to the Pacific Northwest,"
where the last recorded sighting took place near Drain, Oregon,
in 1940.
Now, if all goes as planned, the first condor in more than 100
years will once again glide over the North Coast by the fall of
2020.
"I'm having the opportunity to fulfill the prayers of my elders,"
says Williams- Claussen, a Del Norte County native and Harvard graduate,
as her 10-month-old daughter babbles in the background.
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COURTESY
OF THE YUROK TRIBE - Tianna Williams-Claussen, a Yurok wildlife
biologist and tribal member, hold the beak of a California
condor.
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Williams-Claussen pauses, saying that in many ways having a child
brought her full circle in appreciating the immensity of what the
recovery project will be accomplishing. Her daughter, she notes,
will be among the "first generation to grow up with condors in the
sky in more than 100 years."
Getting to this point has been a long journey, with the tribe reaching
out to local landowners both public and private as
well as federal and state agencies, including U.S. Fish and Wildlife,
which leads the California Condor Recovery Project with more than
a dozen partners, to establish a collaborative effort.
The Yurok Tribe's wildlife team has spent the last decade laying
the groundwork for the birds' return by mapping potential habitat,
working to educate hunters about non-lead ammunition options and
trapping fellow scavengers turkey vultures and ravens
to test their blood for lead exposure, which is the single greatest
threat to condors' survival in the wild.
The prep work also included the sampling of marine mammals, which
are expected to be one of condors' major food sources, to check
for toxins that could impede the already slow-to-reproduce birds'
ability to successful lay and raise the one precious egg a female
will produce every other year.
On top of that, condors are late bloomers for the avian world,
not reaching sexual maturity for five to seven years. Add those
stats to the condors' vulnerability to human interaction and an
uphill battle for survival in a modern world is set.
At a recent Sequoia Park Zoo lecture, the tribe's senior biologist
Chris West, who brings decades of condor reintroduction experience
to the Yurok effort, used the dichotomy between how many chicks
an eagle could potentially produce in a decade versus a California
condor.
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SEQUOIA
PARK ZOO - Sequoia Park Zoo zookeeper Nate Krickhahn at Bittercreek
National Wildlife Refuges release site.
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Over 10 years, a breeding eagle pair might hatch 20 to 30 eaglets
while a condor couple would see a maximum of five offspring during
that same time period.
"It's this slow reproduction cycle that does cause problems for
condors," he says, noting "we don't know how long they live" but
its cousin to the south, the Andean condor, has been known to live
up to 80 years in captivity.
Joined by Williams-Claussen at the lecture, West also lays out
plans for the local release which he says all the research
up to this stage indicates is a promising landing spot, including
"quite an abundance of high quality" habitat and lower levels of
lead in potential food sources than other areas where condors have
been returned.
An additional benefit is the region's relatively low human population.
West says the releases will begin with a "cohort of six birds that
had been well socialized during captivity for two to three years."
They will be placed in a release management facility basically
a big, open cage where they will live together for several
months before their release.
If needed, West says the team can bring in what he calls "mentors,"
older condors that for one reason or another can't be released but
have "valuable condor social skills that they can impart on these
young birds."
From there, the condor cohort will have an opportunity to test
out their wings while watching others in the wild, like turkey vultures,
flying on the nearby air currents which condors can soar
on for hours, travelling up to 150 miles in a day.
After an acclimation period, the wildlife team will set out some
carcasses to create a feeding opportunity with the local turkey
vultures, then let the condors out to reclaim their historic top
spot in the scavenger hierarchy.
Even though the condors will be out in the open, the wildlife team
will be able to constantly monitor their whereabouts and will conduct
annual trappings and testing of the birds to keep a close eye on
their welfare.
It's something that Williams-Claussen, West and other members of
the wildlife team have been practicing at other release sites in
California.
With the lilt in her voice lifting a bit, Williams-Claussen describes
what it's like to stand underneath a soaring condor displaying a
wingspan of nearly 10 feet and handle one during a release, saying,
"It's so hard to describe them unless you actually see how huge
they are."
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SEQUOIA
PARK ZOO - Sequoia Park Zoo zookeepers Lindsey Miller and
Ruth Mock working with a condor at Oregon Zoo with Yurok senior
wildlife biologist Chris West handling the birds wing.
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"It's a very impactful sort of moment," she says, adding that she
had to fully extend her arms to reach around one.
Intelligent birds that are known to play with sticks or feathers,
Williams-Claussen says condors are "very fun to watch" and definitely
have individual personalities that become apparent if you spend
enough time with them.
"They're very special creatures," she says. "They're definitely
the boss of the scavengers. They're top dog."
Williams-Claussen laughs at the memory of watching how ravens would
come up and tug at the feathers of condors during a feeding to try
to irritate and distract them.
"They're just a lot of fun. ... They're very interesting," she
says. "I'm looking forward to growing our own population here so
we can get to know them as individuals, as well."
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COURTESY
OF THE YUROK TRIBE - Tianna Williams-Claussen, a Yurok wildlife
biologist and tribal member, with a California condor.
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That goal is one step closer to reality with the opening of the
public comment period on the environmental assessment report for
the Northern California Restoration Program centered in Redwood
National Park, which is required by National Environmental Policy
Act.
Two public meetings on the 238-page document are scheduled to take
place May 9, the first from 10 a.m. to noon at the Yurok Tribal
headquarters in Klamath and the second from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Arcata
Community Center.
"The condor plays an integral role in the Yurok Tribe's worldview,
and as the condor population slowly rebuilds throughout its historical
range, condors act as a powerful symbol to the Yurok Tribe, which
is simultaneously taking steps to revive its own culture," the assessment
states, noting the condor "also fulfills a renewal and healing role
for several of the Yurok's neighboring tribes, including the Hupa,
Karuk, Wiyot and Tolowa Dee-ni,'" as well as other tribes of the
Pacific Northwest.
"The purpose of this action is to further the recovery of the California
condor by establishing a new population in the species' historical
range in the Pacific Northwest through captive releases at the park,
while simultaneously reintroducing condors to Yurok Ancestral Territory."
Along with the many state and federal agencies playing a role in
the Northern California Condor Recovery Project, the Sequoia Park
Zoo the oldest in California and one of the smallest in the
nation will be what Zoo Director Gretchen Ziegler describes
as a "pretty pivotal, crucial link," providing a rehabilitation
and treatment center if a bird falls ill.
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USFWS
- A map of current condor release sites.
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Without the nearby zoo, the wildlife team would have to transport
any sick condors north to Portland or south to Oakland. Ziegler
says her staff, which has been training at other release sites,
is "very excited" about being part of the effort.
Plans for a treatment center funded by proceeds of a Zootini
auction are done and the simple building, basically comprised
of holding pens, will be ready if needed by the time the first condors
are set to fly.
"We are the only zoo facilities here that can do that kind of help,"
Ziegler says. "We've got the expertise in our staff and the staff
presence here every day to work with sick condors."
While the vulnerable birds will not be on display for the condors'
"calmness and protection," Ziegler says the zoo is working to fit
the rehabilitation role into the visitor education experience by
perhaps having a video feed of the holding pens or giving tours
of the facilities when the building is not in use.
"It's just going to be hard to predict how often the facility will
be in use with condors," she says.
The current goal of the recovery efforts is allowing the condor
to build up a self-sustaining population that no longer needs to
have its numbers boosted by captive breeding programs and then,
ultimately, to reach the status West describes as "birds without
tags."
"(It's) getting them to the point where they don't have to be monitored
anymore, where they can just be out and be wild condors and they
don't have to be messed with by us," West says.
Welcome
to the Yurok Condor Program
The Yurok Condor Reintroduction Initiative is now in the final stages
of the required, formal process associated with returning the culturally
invaluable species to the heart of its historical range. A National
Environmental Policy Act project review, which began in January,
2017, is the last hurdle before condors can be reintroduced into
the Tribes ancestral territory. A favorable NEPA document
will pave the way for the Tribe and its partners to build a release
facility and release a managed flock of birds into the wild.
http://www.yuroktribe.org/departments/selfgovern/wildlife_program/condor/condorproject.htm
Kimberly Wear is the Journal's assistant editor. Reach her at
442-1400, extension 323, or kim@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her
on Twitter @kimberly_wear.
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