A rare condor hatched and raised by foster parents in captivity will soon get to live wild
By all accounts, Milagra, the “miracle” condor from California, should not be alive today.
But now that she’s almost 17 months old, she’s one of four large endangered birds that will stretch their wings in the wild as part of a release this weekend near the Grand Canyon.
There is no more appropriate name for a young bird that has managed to survive against all odds. Her mother died from the worst of the outbreak bird flu in American history shortly after she laid her egg, and her father nearly succumbed to the same fate as he struggled to hatch the egg alone.
Milagra, which means miracle in Spanish, was rescued from her nest and hatched in captivity thanks to the care of her foster condor parents.
The emergency operation was part of a program set up about 40 years ago to bring back the birds from the brink of extinction when their numbers had fallen to less than two dozen.
The Peregrine Fund and the Bureau of Land Management will stream the release of Milagra and the others online Saturday from Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, about 50 miles from the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.
Condors have been released there since 1996. But the annual practice was suspended last year due to what is known as the “bird flu.” Highly pathogenic bird flu killed 21 condors in the Utah-Arizona herd.
“This year’s condo release will be especially impactful given the losses we experienced in 2023 due to HPAI and lead poisoning,” said Tim Hauck, program director of the Peregrine Fund’s California Condor program.
Today, it is estimated that as many as 360 of these birds live in the wild, with some in the Baja of Mexico and most in California. where similar releases continue. More than 200 others live in captivity.
Condors are the largest land bird in North America, with a wingspan of 9 feet (2.9 meters), and have been protected as an endangered species in the US since 1967. Many conservationists consider it a miracle that they still exist at all.
Robert Bate, manager of the Vermillion Cliffs monument, said the release will be shared online in real time “so that the scope and reach of this incredible and successful collaborative recovery effort can continue to inspire people around the world.”
California condors mate for life with a lifespan of up to 60 years and can travel up to 200 miles (322 kilometers) per day, which they are known to do while moving back and forth between Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks.
The Peregrine Fund began breeding condors in 1993 in collaboration with federal wildlife managers. The first was released into the wild in 1995 and it would be another eight years before the first chick from captivity was hatched.
The fund’s biologists generally do not name the birds they help raise in captivity, but identify them with numbers to avoid giving them human characteristics out of respect for the species.
They made an exception in the case of #1221, also known as Milagra. They saw her journey as emblematic of the captive breeding program that came full circle.
Milagra’s foster father, No. 27, was hatched in the wild in California in 1983. It was one of the first to be included in the program as a nestling when only about 20 were known to exist around the world.
Convinced that this was the species’ only hope for survival, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the time made an unprecedented, risky decision to capture the remaining 22 known to exist to launch the breeding program. Over time it has grown with help from the Oregon Zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
“Once they realized that California condors made great captive parents, they started allowing them to breed their own kind,” says Leah Esquivel, breeding manager at the fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho .
Like all California condors living in the wild today, Milagra’s biological parents were products of the program.
Milagra’s mother, number 316, laid her softball-sized egg in a cave on the edge of a cliff in Arizona in April 2023 – one of her last acts before succumbing to bird flu. Sick herself, her biological father, #680, did his best to care for the egg, but the chances of survival diminished. So when he left the nest in a rare move, biologists who had been monitoring sick condors swooped in and took the only egg.
“(He) was so focused on hatching the egg that he didn’t leave to find food and water for himself, risking his own life,” said Jessica Schlarbaum, spokesperson for the Peregrine Fund.
They put the fragile egg in a field incubator and ran 300 miles back to Phoenix, much like a human transplant team carrying a heart in an ice chest.
To everyone’s surprise, the egg hatched.
Milagra tested negative for bird flu and spent about a week at the Liberty Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Mesa, Arizona, before being transferred to a breeding facility in Idaho, where foster parents took her under their care.
Esquivel, the propagation manager, said Milagra’s foster mother, No. 59, raised eight cubs during her lifetime.
Esquivel described #59 as unique. Although the bird never mates, it goes through all the other breeding movements each year and lays an egg.
“Her eggs are obviously infertile, but because she is a great mother, we use her and her mate to raise young,” Esquivel said. “We simply swap the infertile egg for a dummy egg and then place a hatching egg in the nest if we have one available for her.”
Milagra’s foster father fathered about 30 cubs and spent years helping raise nestlings in captivity.
After spending about seven months with foster parents, the young people go to ‘condor school’ in California to learn the basics: eating together, strengthening the muscles for flying and learning to get along with fellow condors.
For the biologists, restoration partners, volunteers and others who have persevered over the past year, Hauck summed up the release of the birds from this year’s graduating class Saturday as “a moment of triumph.”