California condors live in a handful of carefully managed regions across the western United States and Mexico. Wild, free-flying populations exist in southern California, central California’s Big Sur coast, northern California’s Redwood National Park, northern Arizona and southern Utah near the Grand Canyon, and the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir mountains in Baja California, Mexico. As of 2022, roughly 347 condors were flying free across these five regions, with another 214 in captive breeding programs.
Southern and Central California
The largest concentration of condors in California splits between two populations. The southern California flock, reestablished in 1995, numbers around 89 birds and ranges through the mountains north of the Los Angeles basin. These condors use rugged terrain in and around Los Padres National Forest and Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge as home base, roosting on cliff faces and in large trees while foraging across a wide swath of open rangeland. About 64% of the condor’s California range falls on private land, with most of the remaining habitat managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
The central California flock is the state’s largest, with about 94 birds. Released near Big Sur starting in 1997, these condors ride thermals along the dramatic coastal cliffs and inland valleys of the central coast. They nest in caves on steep cliff faces and in the broken tops of old-growth conifers, including coastal redwoods and historically giant sequoias. Breeding pairs typically forage within about 45 miles of their nests, though they occasionally range more than 110 miles out.
Arizona and Utah
The Southwest flock is the largest single wild population, with roughly 116 condors as of 2022. These birds were first released at the Vermilion Cliffs in northern Arizona in 1996 and have since spread across a territory that spans the Grand Canyon, parts of southern Utah, and into adjacent corners of Nevada. Zion National Park sits in the middle of this range, and visitors regularly spot condors perched on or circling above Angels Landing and near Lava Point on the Kolob Terrace Road.
Condors in this region can cover more than 125 miles in a single day, and individuals have been documented traversing the entire extent of the species’ range during a day’s flight. That mobility means a bird spotted over the Grand Canyon one morning could be soaring above southern Utah by afternoon. They roost in groups on rocky outcrops and cliff ledges, returning to the same sites year after year.
Northern California and the Pacific Northwest
The newest population lives in and around Redwood National and State Parks in far northern California. In March 2022, the first group of condors arrived there, marking the species’ return to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in over a century. Lewis and Clark recorded seeing condors at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805, and the birds were once common throughout the coastal redwood belt.
This reintroduction was driven by the Yurok Tribe, which identified restoring condors to their ancestral territory as a top priority in 2003. The Tribe’s wildlife program spent years assessing whether the old-growth redwood habitat could still support the birds. After more than a dozen public meetings across California and Oregon and years of planning, the reintroduction was formally approved in 2019. The birds are designated as a “non-essential experimental population,” a legal classification that gives land managers more flexibility in how they handle conflicts between condors and human activity. As of 2022, eight condors made up this fledgling flock, with more releases planned.
Baja California, Mexico
About 40 condors fly wild in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, a rugged mountain range in Baja California, Mexico. This population was established in 2002 with the goal of building a self-sustaining group that could serve as a safety net if disaster struck the U.S. flocks. The terrain mirrors what condors need: remote, steep, sparsely populated mountains with reliable updrafts for soaring and enough large-animal carcasses to scavenge.
What Habitat Condors Need
Condors are not picky eaters, but they are extremely picky about where they nest and roost. They need steep, rocky terrain with caves or ledges for nesting, or old-growth trees large enough to have cavities and broken-off tops created by fire or wind. Coastal redwoods and giant sequoias historically filled this role. For roosting, they prefer large trees, standing dead trees (snags), or cliff faces, and they return to the same roost sites across many years.
Foraging is a different story. Condors are scavengers that rely on carcasses of large animals, so they need vast stretches of open or semi-open land where they can spot food from the air. A single bird’s foraging territory can cover thousands of square miles. This combination of remote, cliff-heavy nesting areas and expansive open foraging grounds is why condor habitat spans such a patchwork of public parkland, national forest, and private ranchland.
How Their Range Has Shrunk and Grown
Thousands of years ago, California condors ranged across much of North America, from the Pacific coast to Texas, Florida, and New York. By the time European settlers arrived, their range had already contracted to the Pacific states, stretching from British Columbia down to Baja California. By the 1980s, lead poisoning, habitat loss, and shooting had reduced the entire species to just 22 birds, all in a small pocket of southern California.
Every wild condor was captured between 1985 and 1987 for a last-ditch breeding program. Reintroductions began in 1992, and each new release site has pushed the species’ footprint outward. The 2022 Redwood release was the first expansion into the Pacific Northwest, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now lists condor populations across Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. The species is still federally endangered, but its geographic range today is broader than it has been in over a century.