The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Arizona marked the 30th anniversary of the California Condor Release at the Condor Viewing Site in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. The milestone event took place on National Public Lands Day and featured the release of four juvenile condors into the wild.
The festivities were held as part of the Department of the Interior’s Freedom 250 initiative. Attendees included hundreds of visitors, partners, volunteers, and agency staff. The event included the Great American Expedition, a traveling flag designed to record stories of stewardship, heritage, and pride across public land sites.
During the event, participants engaged in a seedball-making activity led by BLM Arizona state plants and invasive lead Christina Francois and BLM Arizona Strip District geographic information systems (GIS) specialist Pam Blackmore. The activity used native seeds, clay, soil, and water to create seedballs intended for restoration to enhance native plant communities and reduce invasive species pressure around the viewing site.
The release of the condors followed a period of educational activities involving information booths and sessions with condor biologists. The Peregrine Fund produced a multicamera livestream of the event, which included interviews and a live Q&A. Additionally, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Merlin Bird ID app featured the event to its users in Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and California, reaching more than 144,000 views.
The California Condor Recovery Program is a multi-agency effort involving BLM Arizona and Utah, The Peregrine Fund, Arizona Game and Fish Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and tribal nations. In the late 1980s, only 22 individuals remained of the species. Today, the population has grown to over 600, with 392 birds flying free across four release sites.
