California condors may soon return to habitats in the northern part of the state where they disappeared more than 100 years ago, helped by an Indian tribe that considers them sacred.
Ancient traditional stories of the Yurok tribe talk of the huge birds being able to fly close to the sun, making them ideal messengers to convey prayers.
Now the tribe has gained state and federal permission for the first releases of captive-bred birds on the state's Redwood Coast, returning them to the northern reaches of their historic range where human activity once drove them close to extinction.
An important factor in the release plans is a new state law banning use of lead in ammunition, the primary killer of condors scavenging on the carcasses of animals shot by hunters using lead shot.
Lead fragments in those remains cause paralysis of the condor's digestive systems, bringing on starvation.
Managed populations have managed to survive in Southern California and now, the Yurok are in the forefront of an effort to reintroduce condors at several proposed sites near the tribal reservation were the Klamath River enters the Pacific Ocean.
For the last five years, the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Program, supported by a number of government wildlife agencies, has been conducting research into the possibility of reintroducing the condors -- still considered a critically endanger species -- to the state's northern coastline.
The tribe has entered into an agreement with the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the nonprofit Ventana Wildlife Society to work toward that reintroduction.
Chris West, a wildlife biologist who is directing the project, says the goal is to release six condors together to start the program.
"They aren't really the loners people considered them to be, and really function as a larger flock," West said. "Releasing a group is really the best thing for the bird. It makes it a safer environment, which they can team up in to move across the landscape to find food and other resources."
After further research to determine the exact, best site, the first released could come in the next year to three years, West said.
The Yurok use condor feathers as regalia for ceremonial dances, but with an absence of condors living on tribal lands the tribe is without a source of feathers as replacements for those worn out in ceremonial use, tribal biologist Tiana Williams says.
"When a species like condor or eagle gives you material for your regalia, it is considered their spirit is in that, too. They are singing with you, and praying with you," she says. "We can get feathers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but it's not the same thing as being able to go out there and collect the feathers we need from condors flying over our own skies."
