A decades-long program to bring back the nearly extinct California condor has hit a milestone: The 1,000th condor chick hatched recently at southern Utah’s Zion National Park.
Park officials announced Tuesday that a female condor, No. 409, wearing the tag “9,” laid an egg in mid-March, and the chick hatched in May, in a nest on the cliffs just north of Angels Landing.
No. 409 and the chick’s father, No. 523 (tag “J3”), have been together for the last two years, ever since No. 409’s first mate, No. 337, died from lead poisoning in 2016.