Tribal Members, Researchers Band Together to Bring Back Condor: The tribes of the lower Klamath River have since ancient times decorated themselves with condor feathers when they performed the dances designed to heal a world gone wrong.
“It can soar the highest, so we figured that was the one to get our prayers to heaven when we were asking for the world to be in balance,” said Richard Myers, a member of the Yurok Tribal Council and a leader in the revival of the tribe's world renewal ceremonies.
Now the Yurok Tribe is using modern science in hopes of restoring condors, which have not soared above the northern coast of California since 1914.
If they establish that condors can survive here, and get federal permission to introduce birds from a captive breeding program, it would be the first restoration of condors in the northern half of its historic range, and a stepping stone to condors soaring over Oregon and Washington. Lewis and Clark collected some as they trekked down the Columbia River.
