A California condor hatched and raised at the Los Angeles Zoo has died from lead poisoning just months after being released into the wild, a Northern California native tribe has announced.
The young bird, known as Pey-noh-pey-o-wok’ (Spirit Bird), was part of the Yurok Tribe’s Northern California Condor Restoration Program and had been flying free in the wild for just over three months before its death in January.
At only 18 months old, Pey-noh-pey-o-wok’ was the youngest condor in the Northern California flock and one of 18 birds reintroduced to Yurok ancestral lands since 2022.
The NCCRP delayed announcing the condor’s death until an official pathology report confirmed lead poisoning as the cause.
“A natural death would have been less painful for us, the humans watching as he started to flourish in the wild,” said Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams-Claussen. “That his was human-caused and preventable is devastating.”
Lead poisoning remains the No. 1 cause of death for wild condors, accounting for nearly half of all known fatalities. Almost all cases stem from the ingestion of carrion (animal carcasses) contaminated by lead ammunition used for hunting game, livestock and vermin.
“A tiny lead bullet fragment is enough to kill not only a condor but also vultures and eagles,” the Yurok Tribe wrote on social media. “These important scavengers remove carcasses from the landscape and are critical in reducing the spread of disease in many game species.”
The condor was one of 18 free-flying condors released as part of the NCCRP program, a collaborative effort led by the Yurok Tribe in partnership with the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The birds have been seen exploring large swaths of their historic range, from the Eel River in the south to the Smith River in the north, officials said.
Despite the human-caused death of this bird, the Tribe continues to push forward with the goal of restoring condors to Northern California for the first time in more than a century.
“Death is part of work with wild animals, but his was hard as our first loss,” said Chris West, program manager and Yurok Tribe senior biologist. “Thankfully, we have 17 other amazing birds in our flock carrying our hopes.”
The Yurok Tribe is the largest federally recognized Indigenous group in California with ancestral land in Northern California, in parts of Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
For more information about the Northern California Condor Restoration Program and the Yurok Tribe’s conservation efforts for the species, click here.
