By the early 1960s, only about 60 condors remained in the wild. Conservationists needed to act fast, or the birds would disappear. In 1967, the California condor was one of the first species to be listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The act made it illegal to harm condors and directed federal agencies to protect them.
In 1972, DDT was banned from global use. It was a win for condors, but their population still struggled to rebound. That’s in part because it takes a long time for the birds to reproduce. “Condors have lifelong pair bonds,” says Williams-Claussen. A male and a female will stay together for life and raise only one chick every year or two. It takes six years for young condors to then grow to reproductive age.
In 1979, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created the California Condor Recovery Program to monitor and help increase the birds’ population. But the combination of a high death rate and slow reproduction continued to drive condors toward extinction, explains Williams-Claussen. “In 1987, all of the remaining wild birds were brought into captivity,” says Williams-Claussen. “They were down to just 22 free-flying individuals.” The team planned to breed the condors and release the offspring. But with so few eggs laid per year, this was no easy task. In 1992, six condors raised in captivity were released into the wild in Southern California. Since then, the population in the state has slowly grown.