B7, the youngest member of the North Coast’s California condor flock, has died from lead poisoning after just three months in the wild.
The death of the 18-month-old male marks the first in the Northern California Condor Restoration Program — a Yurok Tribe-led effort to return the endangered bird they know as prey-go-neesh to the northern reaches of the species’ former territory in partnership with Redwood National and State Parks and other agencies.
Like the other birds now flying free under the program, B7, also known by the Yurok name Pey-noh-pey-o-wok’ (I am friend or kind or good natured), was being monitored by transmitters attached to one of his wings. The first indication something was wrong came Jan. 11, when the tracker sent out a mortality signal, indicating the bird had been too still for too long.
According to Yurok Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams-Claussen, the notifications can be triggered by a range of things — from the worst case scenario or a bird being injured to the transmitter being damaged or the condor simply hunkering down during a storm.
“Regardless, it prompts a response from our staff to investigate so we can render aid or recover a deceased condor, if necessary,” Williams-Claussen says.
Unfortunately, in this case, a search party followed the signal to a remote area of the park and discovered B7 dead amid a cluster of downed trees on the forest floor.
There was no real outward sign of trauma, she says, but they didn’t want to “make any conjecture about what caused his death” and decided to hold off publicly reporting the loss until a necropsy was performed, which is protocol “anytime you can recover a condor who has died.”
“It’s particularly tragic because B7 was such a friendly guy.”
“It’s particularly tragic because B7 was such a friendly guy,” Williams-Claussen says. “Not that we don’t love all of our condors but he had our particular love because of that. He was just a joy to watch engage with the other condors and he was our youngest condor. They’re not our babies but it feels like a baby’s been lost, like one of our children has been lost.”
The Yurok Tribe announced the death March 12 after results of an extensive pathological assessment came back showing a lead air gun pellet in B7’s “ventriculus, or gizzard, and high to very high concentrations of lead in his liver and bone.” The source of the pellet is unknown.
“The loss of Pey-noh-pey-o-wok’ was a huge blow to us,” NCCRP Program Manager and Yurok Tribe Senior Biologist Chris West said in the announcement. “Death is part of work with wild animals, but his was hard as our first loss. Thankfully, we have 17 other amazing birds in our flock carrying our hopes, dreams and prayers.”
Lead poisoning is the single greatest threat to condors, the apex scavengers known as nature’s cleanup crew, that play an important role in the ecosystem by helping clear large carcasses from the landscape, preventing the spread of disease. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, half of all condor deaths in the wild are caused by the birds feeding on carrion contaminated with lead ammunition fragments.
Before the first condors in more than a century arrived back on Yurok ancestral lands through the NCCRP, the tribe spent nearly 20 years preparing for the return of prey-go-neesh, which included working extensively to educate local hunters about non-lead ammunition options. And, in 2019, California banned the use of lead ammunition for hunting.
As in many Indigenous cultures, the condor is sacred in Yurok tradition. Believed to be among the Earth’s first creatures and the one that carries their prayers to the Creator, prey-go-neesh also joins in the tribe’s World Renewal ceremonies to bring balance back to the world through the gift of feathers, which are used in dancers’ regalia.
A natural death would have been easier to accept, Williams-Claussen says, noting, “It hits you differently when you know it was something technically preventable, even if someone didn’t know what they were doing. … But it’s outside of the scope of their natural risks and something as humans that we bring, that we’ve introduced into the system, so that was hard.”
She noted members of other condor recovery programs all sent them the same message as they were starting out: “Yes, love your birds but be prepared: You are going to lose condors.”
“So we went into this with the idea of maintaining a balance between understanding that wild animals die and loving them, and trying to prepare them as much as we can for the real world, so to speak,” Williams-Claussen says. “And you’re not prepared, you’re not prepared, there were definitely tears when I heard he was officially deceased and there were more tears when I heard that it was lead.”
None of the remaining birds have shown signs of lead toxicosis, she says, noting the NCCRP is heading into its annual spring trapping season, when the entire flock is brought in for medical exams, which include a standard lead test.
“I think the point that is so important for people to remember and for people to understand is it was one small choice to use this lead round, and maybe the person knew about the issue of lead and maybe they didn’t, I don’t know,” Williams-Claussen says. “But these tiny choices can have such a huge impact and so it is really important that we continue to get the word out about how lead is impacting our raptor populations and what we can do to transition to nonlead options.”
The North Coast flock had several close calls before B7’s death, most recently in November, when A9 underwent weeks of intensive medical treatment due to a potentially lethal case of lead poisoning while eight other birds showed elevated lead levels.
In October of 2023, A6 also underwent lead poisoning treatment and five other condors were found to have elevated levels of the toxin during routine health assessments done a few days after they fed on the contaminated remains of an elk a poacher killed in the Bald Hills area of Redwood National and State Parks.
A year before that, two tainted elk were found within the North Coast condors’ range — with just one of the poached animals containing enough lead bullet fragments to kill several condors, according to the Yurok Tribe.
“But if we can get the word across about how toxic lead is to every form of life, particularly condors and eagles and raptors and the like, we’ll see change.”
“We don’t know if it was just someone out there managing their varmints or somebody was taking pot shots at animals,” Williams-Claussen says of the pellet found in B7, noting a small piece of lead the size of a pin head can be enough to kill a condor. “We really just don’t know where it came from, only that it was in his system. But if we can get the word across about how toxic lead is to every form of life, particularly condors and eagles and raptors and the like, we’ll see change. I think it’s going to be a generational change, personally, it’s going to take some time. But we’ll see change.”
California condors were declared endangered in 1967, when fewer than 100 remained in the wild, before the population continued dwindling down until two decades later the last of the wild condors were placed into captive breeding programs in a race against time to save the largest bird in North America from extinction. By then, only 22 survived.
In the ensuing decades, the overall population slowly increased. As of December, according to the USFWS, there were about 560 condors total, with more than half of those flying in the wild at a scattering of release sites across the west — including Big Sur and Pinnacles — as well as in Arizona and Baja California.
The Northern California program is the latest to join the fold and there are some bright signs for the fledgling flock amid the loss of B7.
The Northern California program is the latest to join the fold and there are some bright signs for the fledgling flock amid the loss of B7.
When the original four birds in the flock were sent out into the wild back in 2022, they generally didn’t venture too far from the release site, where regular offerings of carrion are still set out with a small pool of water for the condors to drink and bathe in at the compound encircled by a 1,600-foot electrified fence to provide the birds additional security from potential predators, including mountain lions.
In comparison, B7 was scavenging on his own very quickly, which Williams-Claussen says “is on the one hand very exciting and super scary, particularly because this is what happened.”
“It’s really awesome watching the way our population is changing over time,” Williams-Claussen says. “Our first four birds that we let out stuck very close to home and I don’t blame them. They had never been out in the wild before, they were raised in captivity, as all of the new condors we receive are, and we had food and we had water and we had a safe place for them to land so that they could be protected against predators and they were pretty slow to branch out.”
Overtime, as the older birds have steadily increased their range and become “much more masterful of the landscape,” newer members have been able to “actually integrate with the flock and much more quickly pick up how to use the land and find the resources,” she says.
“By the time B7’s cohort came, this most recent one that we had last year, he could just follow folks around and be a pro very quickly,” Williams-Claussen says. “So that’s what you hope for, they’re very social birds and that’s exactly what you’re looking for, that these older birds who have kind of reacquired that knowledge of the land can then pass it on to the younger birds.”
“But it does increase their risk,” she adds. “Just as when you send your kid out into the world, it increases their risk. So, it’s a blessing and a scary thing as well.”
In addition, several of the older males — including elder flock members A1, A2 and A3 — are beginning to display what’s known as the condor courtship dance, partially spreading out their wings with their head down before a female, often rocking back and forth.
But, Williams-Claussen says, there are no indications things have moved beyond those initial overtures, noting the only female possibly mature enough to breed would be A0.
One of the many obstacles to condors’ ability to rebound in the wild is simple biology. As late bloomers in the avian world, condors don’t reach sexual maturity for five to seven years, with the first condors released on the North Coast just reaching that lower rung.
And, as West previously told the Journal, condors at new release sites are often a little slow to figure out the logistics of mating because they haven’t had any adults around to show them the ropes.
Meanwhile, another round of condors is expected to be released this summer, Williams-Claussen says, but the program is still awaiting word on how many and where they might be coming from, noting there’s a lot of logistical planning work to be done in anticipation of the birds’ arrival.
Ultimately, the goal of the recovery effort is to allow the condor to build up self-sustaining populations that no longer need to have their numbers boosted by releases from breeding programs and to reach the status West has described as “birds without tags,” living their lives without human intervention.
“We are all very lucky to be a part of this,” Williams-Claussen says.
Kimberly Wear is the Journal’s digital editor. Reach her at
(707) 442-1400, extension 323, or kim@northcoastjournal.com.
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This article appears in Youngest North Coast Condor Dies of Lead Poisoning.
