In 1987 biologists caught the last wild California condor, leaving 27
birds, all in captivity. Captive breeding has since brought the species
to 607, most of them flying free across five flocks. But in the United
States wild condors still die faster than they breed, with lead from
hunters' ammunition behind half the deaths with a known cause, so the
condor has been rescued from extinction, not yet recovered.
Rescued from extinction, not yet recovered
Biologists saved the California condor by catching every last wild bird and breeding them in zoos. In 1987 there were 27 condors left, all in captivity; at the end of 2025 there were 607, and 392 of them were flying free31.
That is a rescue, not yet a recovery. A species counts as recovered when its wild flocks sustain themselves, and in the United States they still don’t: wild condors there die faster than they breed, lead from hunters’ ammunition is the biggest single cause, and the flocks grow only because more birds are released from captivity every year41.
That's how the wild flocks fared in 2025; 46 birds released from captivity made up the gap
Poisoned by what hunters left behind
By the 1980s condors were dying of lead poisoning from carcasses shot by hunters, and by 1982 only 22 were left in the wild172. Then, in the winter of 1984 to 1985, four of the last five breeding pairs died or disappeared3.
The California condor is North America’s largest soaring bird, with a wingspan of 2.8 metres13, and it lives by scavenging. It eats what hunters leave behind, so the lead bullets that killed the animals ended up in the birds.
Why biologists caught every last wild condor
Faced with a wild population that would not likely survive, the State of California and the US Fish and Wildlife Service decided in 1985, reluctantly, to capture every condor left in the wild3. It was a gamble: once the last bird was caught, the species would be extinct in the wild13.
Not everyone agreed. The National Audubon Society went to court, arguing that a wild flock was needed as guide birds for any condors released later, and won an injunction. An appeals court overturned it in 1986, calling the capture plan a reasoned exercise of the agency’s discretion17. Some scientists had questioned whether scarce conservation money should go to what they saw as a hopeless cause at all13.
On 19 April 1987 biologists caught the last wild condor, a male known as AC-9. He joined 26 others in two zoos: 27 birds, the whole species3.
Double clutches and hand puppets: how zoos bred them back
Captive breeding had begun in 1983 at the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park8. Keepers used two tricks to speed it up. The first, called double-clutching, was to take each egg as soon as it was laid, which usually made the pair lay a second and sometimes a third. The second was to raise the chicks with a hand puppet shaped like a condor’s head, so the young birds would not grow up attached to people8.
The first chick hatched in captivity in San Diego in 1988. The Peregrine Fund joined the programme in 1993 and the Oregon Zoo in 200313. In 2025, 54 breeding pairs in captivity laid 67 eggs1.
AC-9, the last wild bird, spent 15 years as a breeding male at the Los Angeles Zoo before being released in 20026, and by 2004 he had an egg in the wild again7. The breeding worked. What kept going wrong was what happened to the birds after release.
How a hunter’s bullet kills a condor
Condors swallow fragments of lead bullets in the carcasses they scavenge, and the lead paralyses their gut: food stops moving, and the bird starves, sometimes within days, sometimes over 40 days or more12. It gets there because a lead-core rifle bullet usually shatters into hundreds of tiny fragments when it hits an animal9; one X-ray of a mule deer’s neck showed more than 4509.
Hunters often gut their kill in the field, and in one study 90% of the gut piles left from deer shot with lead bullets held fragments, a quarter of them more than 200. Deer shot with copper bullets held just six fragments between four of them11. Condors feed in groups on gut piles and on culled pest animals10, so one contaminated carcass can poison several birds at once.
Exposure is almost universal. About 20% of free-flying condors in California need treatment for lead poisoning every year14, and at Pinnacles National Park almost every condor has needed emergency treatment at least once by the time it is old enough to breed, at about seven9.
That late start is why a few deaths matter so much. Every adult lost to lead takes years of chicks with it: replacing one free-flying adult takes two to three young birds bred in captivity20. So very little lead does a great deal of damage. A 2026 study found that fewer than ten contaminated meals a year are enough to keep California’s condors from sustaining themselves15, and since 1992 lead has caused half of all wild condor deaths with a known cause1. The result is the number that decides the verdict: in the US, more wild condors die than hatch.
Still endangered, and still dependent on releases
The California condor is still listed as endangered. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s latest review found that its growth depends on releasing captive-bred birds every year, and that in California and Arizona-Utah more condors die than hatch in the wild4.
In each of the last three years more wild condors died than hatched in the wild, though the gap has shrunk: from 44 in 2023, a year bird flu tore through the Arizona-Utah flock, to six in 2025, by our arithmetic. Releases of 27 to 56 birds a year made up the difference1. Without releases, population models put the California flocks on a decline of between under 1% and about 3% a year, depending on which years are modelled2015.
Two lead bans, and lead deaths still rising
California banned lead ammunition in the condor’s range in 2008 and across the whole state from 2019, the only US state to do so15. By 2023 the Fish and Wildlife Service had seen no fall in condor deaths from lead4. A 2026 study estimated that the bans did cut the lead in condors’ blood, once two changes were accounted for: the birds were foraging further from the clean food put out for them, and more wild pigs were being shot, which suggests lead is still reaching carcasses despite the ban. Lead-related deaths rose anyway15.
Voluntary schemes have hit the same wall. In Arizona, 91% of big-game hunters in the condor’s range used lead-free ammunition or removed their gut piles, yet 55 of 73 condors tested in the winter of 2014 to 2015 had unsafe levels of lead in their blood16. Our reading is that some of that lead came from shooting the scheme didn’t cover, which is why its organisers then widened their request to other shooters16.
The clearest evidence that lead is the problem comes from Mexico. The Baja California flock grows even without releases, while the California flocks would shrink without them15. Baja’s birds are not free of lead: in the years before 2010, 11 of them, half the flock at the time, had to be treated for it13. But exposure there hasn’t turned into the deaths it causes in California, which suggests how much lead reaches the birds matters more than whether any does.
Five flocks, from Baja to the redwoods
Condors now fly in five wild flocks: 216 in California’s two flocks (117 on the central coast and 99 in the south), 98 in Arizona and Utah, 53 in Baja California and 25 in the Pacific Northwest1. The first Arizona birds were released by The Peregrine Fund in 19968, and the Baja release site opened in 200213.
The newest flock is the Yurok Tribe’s, with support from Redwood National Park. The tribe named restoring the condor, prey-go-neesh in Yurok, a top priority in 2003, began the work in earnest in 20082321, and on 3 May 2022 released the first birds in Redwood National and State Parks, the first condors in the region since 18925.
The flock has not yet raised a chick: its first egg, in 2026, appears to have failed24, and in 2025 one of its birds died of lead poisoning1, in a region the tribe’s own studies had found carried less lead than the condor’s southern range22.
The agencies, zoos and tribe behind the rescue
The rescue has many authors. The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the State of California made the capture decision3; the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park bred the first birds8; The Peregrine Fund and the Oregon Zoo added breeding centres and release sites13; and the Yurok Tribe, with support from Redwood National Park, brought condors back to the north21. Around 2010 the programme cost more than $5 million a year, paid by federal, state and private partners together13.
What the condor shows about saving species elsewhere
Between 1993 and 2020, conservation work prevented an estimated 21 to 32 bird extinctions worldwide, and the condor is on the list; breeding in captivity was part of the rescue for 63% of the 32 bird species identified18.
And lead ammunition poisons scavenging birds around the world. The authors of the 2026 condor study say their finding, that fewer than ten contaminated meals a year are enough, helps explain why lead poisoning of scavengers remains a global conservation problem15. The condor is a well-documented case of both the method that saves a species and the poison that keeps it from recovering.
Bird flu, fire and a bill that never ends
Lead is not the only threat. In 2023 bird flu killed 21 condors in the Arizona-Utah flock, about a fifth of it119; a trial vaccine has since given most vaccinated condors a protective response, and a vaccination programme followed19. A wildfire killed 12 in California in 202020.
All of it costs money, indefinitely. An independent review panel called the condor the epitome of a species that survives only through conservation13.
What recovery would look like
Recovery would mean wild condors in the United States raising more chicks than they lose, without new birds arriving from zoos, as the Baja flock already does. The evidence points to one change that would get them there: far less lead in what they eat1514.
California is the only US state with a full ban15, while the Arizona-Utah flock depends on hunters volunteering. If Baja is any guide, a rough inference rather than a forecast, cutting lead exposure there as far as California has tried to could decide whether that flock ever sustains itself. The bird-flu vaccine removes one of the other shocks19.
The next annual count, early in 2027, will show whether the gap between deaths and wild chicks kept narrowing, and whether the Pacific Northwest flock raised its first chick. Until wild births outpace deaths without help, the condor stays what it has been since 1987: saved, and still in intensive care.