Captive-bred California Condors will be released back into the wild at Arizona’s Vermillion Cliffs Saturday.
The Peregrine Fund and Bureau of Land Management will celebrate National Public Lands Day with the endangered bird’s first flights in the wild.
The historical California Condor population declined to just 22 individuals in the 1980s when the greater California Condor Recovery Program was initiated to save the species from extinction.
As of May 2022, there are 113 condors in the wild in northern Arizona and southern Utah. There are 550 condors in the world with more than half flying free in Arizona, Utah, California and Mexico.
The release is set to start at 1 p.m. and will be live-streamed on the Peregrine Fund’s YouTube Channel.
