American Indian tribes have help relocate nearly 200 elk from Kentucky to Wisconsin, where they hadn’t been seen for more than a century. Bottom: To trap the elk originally, wildlife managers either lured them into corrals or dropped nets on them from helicopters. Once trapped, they were transferred by truck to holding pens, where they acclimated prior to release.
the bison story. . . . It’s not just about the species. It is about the landscape, people, history, social justice, reconciliation. It’s about all these big, big things.”
Nature’s Clean-up Crews Ties between the environment and culture have been on Tiana Williams-Claussen’s mind. As direc- tor of the Yurok Tribe’s Wildlife Department, she has worked since 2008 to return California condors to her tribe’s ancestral homelands in northern Cal- ifornia. Condors are prominent in her tribe’s origin stories, and their feathers and songs are essential to its World Renewal Ceremonies. “That’s been a dream, to see condors in the sky
again,” said Williams-Claussen. “Yurok Tribe peo- ple consider themselves to be world-renewal peo- ple. It’s our foundational reason for existing, so we host World Renewal Ceremonies on a two-year cycle along with our neighboring tribes, who have a similar ethos. He [the condor] ties very deeply into that world-renewal aspect of ourselves.” Williams-Claussen said condors also make an enormous ecological contribution. At more than 20 pounds, California condors are North America’s largest land bird. When it comes to devouring rot- ting animal carcasses, other vultures simply aren’t as efficient clean-up crews. Just 200 years ago, the bird could be seen throughout the American West and Southwest. Yet with now only about 500 California condors known to exist in northern Arizona, southern Utah and California, restoring this bird to its former habitat will be no easy feat. The Yurok Tribe established the Northern Califor-
nia Condor Restoration Program with the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in hopes to restore the birds to their ancestral territory on what is now Redwood National and State Parks. With plenty of open space for them to forage, this ideal habitat is also just a few miles as the bird flies from what is now the Yurok Indian Reservation.
Yurok elders set this goal in 2003, but as condors
are a federally protected endangered species, it’s taken almost two decades to accumulate staff, fund- ing and the necessary environmental approvals to construct a holding pen that could host condors relocated from breeding and other wildlife facil- ities until they were ready for release. These vul- tures have nearly 10-foot wing spans and they need a great amount of room to fly, feed and bathe as they adjust to their new home base, explained Wil- liams-Claussen. The birds’ flight pen is a fenced area designed to be large enough to hold up to a dozen condors at a time and will soon be completed. The program’s first four juvenile condors are expected to be released this spring.
A Bugle Returns Cooperative efforts to restore wildlife between tribal and nontribal natural resources managers have been successful in other states. The Ho-Chunk Nation and St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION SPRING 2022 19
COURTESY OF THE WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES
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