The California condor is a New World vulture and the largest North American land bird. It became extinct in the wild in 1987 when all remaining wild individuals were captured, but has since been reintroduced to northern Arizona and southern Utah (including the Grand Canyon area and Zion National Park), the coastal mountains of California, and northern Baja California in Mexico. It is the only surviving member of the genus Gymnogyps, although four extinct members of the genus are also known. The species is listed by the IUCN as Critically Endangered.

The plumage is black with patches of white on the underside of the wings; the head is largely bald, with skin colour ranging from grey on young birds to yellow and bright orange on breeding adults. Its 3.0m wingspan is the widest of any North American bird, and its weight of up to 12 kg nearly equals that of the trumpeter swan, the heaviest among native North American bird species. The condor is a scavenger and eats large amounts of carrion. It is one of the world’s longest-living birds, with a lifespan of up to 60 years.

Condor numbers dramatically declined in the 20th century due to agricultural chemicals (DDT), poaching, lead poisoning, and habitat destruction. A conservation plan put in place by the United States government led to the capture of all the remaining wild condors by 1987, with a total population of 27 individuals. These surviving birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding, and beginning in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then, their population has grown, but the California condor remains one of the world’s rarest bird species. By 31 December 2023, the Fish and Wildlife Service had updated the total world population of 561. A May 2024 population estimate of 561 is provided by the non-profit Ventana Wildlife Society on their website. The condor is a significant bird to many Californian Native American groups and plays an important role in several of their traditional myths.

The California condor conservation project may be one of the most expensive species conservation projects in United States history, costing over $35 million, including $20 million in federal and state funding, since World War II. As of 2007, the annual cost for the condor conservation program was around $2.0 million per year. Successful reintroduction of captive-bred condors into the wild has become a multi-step and complex process, fraught with the need to periodically recapture the birds to test for lead poisoning and sometimes the necessity for lead removal by chelation. There are too many strands to this, to be all covered in this page. I will hope to write about some of them in the future.