By all accounts, Milagra the "miracle" California condor shouldn’t be alive today. But now at nearly 17 months old, she is one of three of the giant endangered birds who got to stretch their wings in the wild as part of a release this weekend near the Grand Canyon. Even after the door was opened Saturday, the birds didn’t immediately leave their pen.
After 20 minutes, one condor left the pen, followed 20 minutes later by another condor. Then, after sitting in the pen for an hour and 20 minutes, Milagra exited the enclosure and took flight. When a livestream of the wildlife release ended, a fourth condor remained in the pen, not ready to leave.
For Milagra, there is no more appropriate name for a young bird that has managed to survive against all odds. Her mother died from the worst outbreak of avian flu in U.S.
history soon after she laid her egg, and her father nearly succumbed to the same fate while struggling to incubate the egg alone. Milagra, which means miracle in Spanish, was rescued from her nest and hatched in captivity thanks to the care of her foster condor parents. The emergency operation was part of a program established about 40 years ago to help bring the birds back from the brink of extinction when their numbers had plummeted to fewer than two dozen.
The Peregrine Fund and the Bureau of Land Management streamed the release of Milagra and the others online Saturday from Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Grand Canyon.