California Condor

The California Condor is the largest flying land bird in North America, riding thermals on a wingspan of up to nine and a half feet. An Ice Age relic that once soared over much of the continent, it was driven to the brink by lead poisoning from bullet fragments in the carcasses it scavenged - by 1982 only 22 remained on Earth, and in 1987 the last wild bird was captured for an all-or-nothing captive breeding program. It worked: condors fly free again over California, Arizona, Utah, and Baja California, and every one of them descends from those final few.