Top-flight recovery: the inspiring comeback of the California condor

Nearly extinct in the 1980s, an intensive programme to reverse the bird's decline has made it a conservation success story

Despite being the largest flying bird in North America, with a wingspan of up to three metres, you would have been hard pushed to see a California condor in the wild in the 1980s. In a last-ditch effort to save the birds, after decades of persecution and population collapse, the few remaining were captured in 1987 for a multimillion-dollar intensive conservation programme.

Today, there are more than 200 in the wild, and local people are already starting to notice. In May 2021, about 10% of the entire population of the birds in the Golden State decided to roost on a woman's home in Tehachapi, southern California, damaging her decking with concrete-like" excrement, an incident that went viral on Twitter when her daughter posted photos.