By all accounts, the Milagra “miracle” California condor should not be alive today.
But now that he’s almost 17 months old, he’s one of three endangered birds that have spread their wings in the wild as part of this weekend’s release near the Grand Canyon.
Even when the gates were opened on Saturday, the birds did not immediately leave their pens. Twenty minutes later, one condor left the pen, followed 20 minutes later by another condor.
Then, after being in the pen for an hour and 20 minutes, Milagra left the yard and ran away. When the announcement of the wild release ended, the fourth condor was in the pen, not ready to leave. For Milagra, there is no more appropriate name for a baby bird that has managed to survive against all odds. Her mother died from the worst outbreak of avian influenza in US history shortly after laying her eggs, and her father nearly met the same fate while trying to incubate the eggs. body alone.
Milagra, which means miracle in Spanish, was rescued from her nest and taken into captivity by her foster parents.
The emergency operation is part of a program established about 40 years ago to help bring the birds back from the brink of extinction when their numbers have dwindled to less than a dozen.
Peregrine Fund and the Bureau of Land Management announced the release of Milagra and others on Saturday online from Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.
Condors have been released there since 1996. But the annual practice was stopped last year because of what is known as “bird disease.” A severe avian virus kills 21 condors in the Utah-Arizona flock.
Tim Hauck, director of the Peregrine Fund’s California Condor Program, said, “This year’s condor release will be particularly impactful because of the losses we experienced in 2023 from HPAI and lead poisoning.
Today, it is estimated that about 360 of the birds live in the wild, with some in the Baja of Mexico and many in California, where the species is released. More than two hundred others live in captivity.
The largest land bird in North America with a wingspan of 9.5 feet (2.9 meters), condors have been protected in the US as an endangered species since 1967. Many conservationists consider it a miracle that it still exists at all.
Robert Bate, manager of the Vermilion Cliffs Monument, said the release was being shared online immediately “so that the scope and reach of this incredible and successful recovery effort can continue to inspire people.” around the world.”
California supports a couple for life up to 60 years and can travel up to 200 kilometers (322 miles) a day, which is known to make them go back and forth between parks Grand Canyon and Zion recreation.
The Peregrine Fund began breeding condors in partnership with federal wildlife managers in 1993. The first were released into the wild in 1995, and it would be another eight years before the first chick was hatched in captivity.
The financiers do not name the birds they help raise in captivity, identifying them instead with numbers to avoid giving them human characteristics out of respect for the species.
They took exception to #1221, aka Milagra. They saw his journey as a symbol of the captive breeding program coming around.
Milagra’s adoptive father, #27, was born in the forest in California in 1983. He was one of the first to be introduced to the program as a nursery when it was known that less than ten two and two are still around the world.
Convinced that it was the species’ only hope for survival, the US Fish and Wildlife Service made the unprecedented, dangerous decision at the time to capture the 22 remaining individuals known to have available to start the study program. Over time, it grew with help from the Oregon Zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
“Once they realized that California condors are good parents in captivity, they started allowing them to raise their own species,” said Leah Esquivel, communications manager at the Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho. .
Like all Californians in the field today, Milagra’s parents were a product of that program.
Mother Milagra, #316, laid her softball-sized egg in a cave on the edge of an Arizona cliff in April 2023 – one of the last things she did before succumbing to avian influenza. Ailing himself, his biological father, #680, did his best to care for the egg, but prospects for survival had dwindled. So when she left the nest, the biologists who were looking after the sick came in and took the egg by herself.
“(He’s) so focused on hatching the egg that he doesn’t stop finding food and water for himself, putting his life at risk,” said Peregrine Fund spokeswoman Jessica Schlarbaum.
They dumped the fragile egg at a facility that runs 300 miles (480 kilometers) back to Phoenix, unlike human transporters that carry hearts in ice chests.
To everyone’s surprise, the egg came out.
Milagra tested negative for avian flu and spent about a week at the Liberty Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Mesa, Arizona, before being taken to a ranch in Idaho, where her parents raised her. took him under their wing.
Esquivel, the media manager, said foster mother Milagra, #59, raised eight nestlings in her lifetime.
Esquivel described #59 as unique. Although the bird is not married, it does everything else that happens in the womb and turns eggs.
Esquivel said: “It is clear that her eggs are infertile, but since she is a good mother, we use her and her husband to grow.” “We replace the infertile egg with a bell egg, and put the hatching egg into the nest when we have one for it.”
Milagra’s foster father has fostered about 30 young and helped raise children in captivity for many years.
After spending about seven months with the adoptive parents, the young will go to “condor school” in California to learn the basics: eating together, strengthening muscles for airplanes and learning to interact with each other.
For biologists, recovery partners, volunteers and others who endured last year, Hauck summed up Saturday’s release of birds from this year’s graduating class as “a moment of triumph.” .”
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