A California condor flies into Oregon for the first time in 122 years, completing a 380-mile loop over four days before returning to Redwoods National Park in northern California. The bird, known as B9, was identified by conservationists from the Yurok Tribe as the individual responsible for the crossing, the first recorded in Oregon since 1904.
A Curious Bird Covers New Ground
B9’s route took her north from the redwoods, past Redding in northern California and across the state border into Oregon, where she made stops near Medford, Cave Junction and Brookings before recrossing the line and heading home. According to Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams Claussen, who spoke to Oregon’s Organisation for Public Broadcasting, the condor was covering close to 100 miles a day. ‘She flew almost 100 miles per day,’ Williams Claussen said, ‘which means she was really utilising the landscape the way that only a condor can, really taking advantage of those mountains and riverways that give good flight corridors.’
B9 was released into the wild in 2022 by the Yurok, as part of the Northern California Condor Restoration Programme. According to the Ukiah Daily Journal, she was hatched on 3 April 2024 at the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, before being brought into the programme. Her journey north was not just a personal adventure: the Rogue Valley Times reported that the excursion expanded the restoration programme flock’s range by 25 miles north and 35 miles east, a concrete measure of how the population is beginning to push into territory it has not occupied for generations.
Recovery Built on Decades of Difficult Work
The California condor’s road back from the edge has been one of the more demanding conservation efforts in modern memory. By the 1980s, the species had been reduced to just 22 wild individuals, all of whom were captured and placed in a captive breeding programme. The work was slow. By 2016, a milestone arrived when more condors were born in the wild than died there, yet even then the wild population had reached only 276 individuals.
Milestones have been coming more steadily in recent years. In February, a female in the Redwoods population laid an egg in the hollow of a redwood tree in a remote corner of the park. That was the first time a condor had nested there in over 100 years. The egg did not hatch, but Williams Claussen was clear-eyed about what the attempt meant. ‘Even with the egg loss, that was still a really amazing milestone for us,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty common that eggs will fail in that first year, as these naive parents are really figuring it out.’
The Yurok Tribe has been central to the northern California effort, and their wildlife team’s ability to identify B9 individually speaks to the close monitoring that makes these incremental gains trackable. Without that kind of on-the-ground knowledge, a lone condor crossing a state line would be little more than a rumour. With it, it becomes a data point, a range expansion, and a record.
Condors are North America’s largest flying birds, and their recovery has required not only breeding programmes but active management of threats including lead poisoning from spent ammunition, a problem that has drawn attention from bodies including the US Fish & Wildlife Service. The species remains critically endangered, and each confirmed sighting in new territory carries weight beyond the symbolic.
B9’s Oregon crossing adds Oregon to the map for a programme that began in redwood country and is, mile by mile, expanding outward. The Rogue Valley Times noted the range expansion figures, and the Yurok’s own records now include the first Oregon entry in well over a century. The next step for the programme will be watching whether other birds from the flock follow B9’s lead into new corridors, or whether this remains one condor’s solo achievement for a while longer.
