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As the temperature ticked up toward 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the last Saturday of September, eager fans poured into a usually barren basin in Arizona’s Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, just south of the Utah border. Some had driven for hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of the young icon whose image adorned bright blue t-shirts for sale at the merch table.

Seventeen months after she was rescued as an egg from the same red rock cliffs, the California Condor known as Milagra—Spanish for “miracle”—returned to her wild flock, drawing raucous cheers, and a few tears, from her supporters.

“By all accounts, Milagra shouldn’t have even been there,” says Tim Hauck, director of the California Condor program for The Peregrine Fund, a raptor conservation organization. Hauck helps manage the southwest flock, a group of wild condors that roost and roam between the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park. The cohort is the second oldest of , which together comprise more than 300 birds. Around 200 more condors live in captivity, supporting breeding programs. Just a few decades since the species’ near-extinction in the 1980s, the giant vultures once again fly free in North America, but the world-famous conservation success story still requires tremendous dedication and coordination between state and federal agencies, tribal partners, and nonprofits.

And there are still challenges: Last spring, the southwest flock was devastated by highly pathogenic avian influenza. Twenty-one condors died, a loss Hauck estimates set back the flock’s recovery by at least 10 years. Among the dead was condor 316, a 20-year-old female who left behind her mate—and an egg. Knowing that the surviving adult, condor 680, faced steep odds and grave risks attempting to hatch it alone, Hauck’s team scaled the cliffs to recover the egg. Staff and volunteers at a Phoenix wildlife rehabilitation center successfully incubated and hatched the egg in May 2023.

“There aren’t thousands of condors out there,” Hauck says. “There are only a few hundred, and we will go to literally the ends of the earth to save every single bird.”

A young condor’s education

Milagra—officially, condor 1221—spent more than a year at The Peregrine Fund’s breeding facility in Boise, Idaho, first under the care of seasoned foster parents (including a male that was once one of just two dozen condors left in the world), and then in a socialization pen with other young condors and two older mentor birds. That’s where Milagra built up her flight muscles and learned proper condor “manners,” says Leah Esquivel, The Peregrine Fund’s propagation program director. Condors are social birds, frequently feeding and roosting in groups, and a young condor’s education includes learning to wait its turn.

Despite Milagra’s exceptional start in life, her caregivers say she’s grown up to be a typical condor. “Which is a good thing,” says Esquivel, who initially worried about the young bird imprinting on humans. “She did exactly what she needed to do.”

Besides her etiquette training, Milagra was prepared for her return to the wild with a microchip and a numbered wing tag (“21”) to make it easier to track her movements. She also received an inoculation against avian flu  the virus that killed her mother and a score of other condors in her flock. Though the disease is still circulating in wild birds and other animals around the world, it has not been detected in the southwest condors since April 2023. Even more remarkable, says Hauck, blood tests last winter revealed that many members of the flock have avian flu antibodies, indicating they were infected with the virus and survived. Condors have unusually hardy immune systems—necessary for a carrion diet full of pathogens—but the discovery was still a welcome surprise after last year’s deaths. “We really had no idea,” says Hauck, who hopes the natural immunity will help protect the region’s population.

But the virus is not the only danger, and last winter the southwest condor flock was hit again, this time by a more familiar threat: lead poisoning. Picked up from carcasses and gut piles left behind by hunters using lead ammunition, lead is the for condors and kills birds in the southwest flock each year. Even so, Hauck says, the past year’s losses were a shock. At least 12 condors died from lead poisoning, the worst year in the program’s history.

A preventable scourge

The number of condor deaths was a surprise, says Hauck, but the exposure to toxic lead was not: “It’s almost an inevitability.” That reality weighs heavily on the minds of Milagra’s caregivers and supporters as she returns to the wild. How long can her luck last?

“That’s the scariest part about seeing these youngsters go back out, especially one that you have a connection with,” says Jan Miller, animal care coordinator at Liberty Wildlife, where Milagra arrived as a long-shot egg and left as a healthy, fuzzy hatchling. Miller was at the base of the cliffs to , alongside many of the others who helped bring the condor into the world. “It was emotional for everybody,” she says.

High on a clifftop above the spectators, Milagra waited in a roomy pen with three other captive-reared condors, the first wave of 12 birds that will join the flock this fall. Shawn Farry, The Peregrine Fund’s condor program manager, was charged with opening the pen’s door. He was also there for the first condor release at the site, 28 years ago. “I still have the same nerves of letting the first birds go in ‘96, where there were none in the wild, and you were responsible for them, and they were incredibly valuable,” he says. “Part of your brain is telling you don’t let them out, because that’s the best way to keep them alive.”

More than 40 years into the project of condor recovery, the species’ rehabilitation still depends on the extraordinary dedication of scientists, veterinarians, and other caregivers and supporters. The work requires long hours and extreme conditions: Staff in the southwest traverse the cliffs year round, enduring punishing sun in the summer and trudging through snow in the winter, often hauling jugs of water and heavy animal carcasses to feed the flock. The demands are as emotional as they are physical, especially as the team loses birds each year to the preventable scourge of lead poisoning.

“It’s been a really hard year,” Hauck says, “and it’s helped us have perspective.” Hauck’s outlook has sharpened: There will always be threats, like avian flu, that are hard to predict and control, but lead poisoning is a solvable problem. “We’re going to step up our efforts. We’re going to push harder than ever to try to change people’s minds and get them to use non-lead ammunition,” he says. “You can’t get complacent, is what we realized. You think you’re making progress until you’re not.”

Hauck says he and his colleagues will continue their work “with as much enthusiasm and vigor as we possibly can, because condors’ lives depend on it.” But they can’t be the only ones who care: “We need the public’s help in helping these birds maintain their rightful place on the landscape,” he says. Not only because they are fascinating, charismatic creatures—they also provide the vital ecosystem service of cleaning up carcasses that could otherwise spread disease. “We need them out there,” Hauck says.

A powerful moment 

The fans gathered to see Milagra return to her flock likely knew the risks she will face in the wild, but that didn’t dampen the spirit of the day. Cheers erupted as each bird left the pen, and when Milagra emerged, “it was the biggest crowd roar I’ve heard at a release,” Hauck says.

Milagra and the other releases will be closely watched for the next few weeks as they adjust to their new life. Field crews will keep eyes on the birds through all daylight hours, stepping in if necessary to shoo them away from vulnerable perches (coyotes abound), and putting out ample food and water until the condors get the hang of roosting and feeding in the wild. If all goes well, Milagra and her companions will integrate into the existing flock, roaming their territory and, eventually, pairing off and rearing wild condors of their own. Condors typically don’t breed until they’re at least five years old, giving them plenty of time to socialize and learn from the older birds. After all of this year’s releases, the southwest population will number around 90 birds. 

Milagra is already mingling. After she emerged from the flight pen—opting to walk out, rather than soar away—she hung around, deciding to lunch on a carcass laid out by the field crew. As she ate, she was joined by an older male. They fed side by side and, for a moment, faced each other on their craggy perch, her still-fuzzy and dark head showing her youth beside his smooth pink one. He was condor 680: Milagra’s father.

It’s unlikely the birds recognized their family ties, Hauck says, but for the humans watching, it was a powerful moment. Even as her wild life begins, with all its risks, Milagra’s story had come full circle.

Already a ray of hope in a hard year, Milagra will now be a touchstone, says Chelsea Haitz, propagation program manager for The Peregrine Fund, who helped care for Milagra in Idaho. 

“Conservation is an endurance competition, right? There’s a lot of highs and a lot of lows,” Haitz says. “It’s stories like this that keep our feet moving when the going gets tough.”