Thanks to the Yurok Tribe, a rare sight may soon return to North Coast skies: the endangered California condor. While its face isn't built to inspire any love letters, its wingspan is 9 feet of majesty that may have vanished into extinction, were it not for two decades of effort by conservationists and the government. Studies performed over the past five years in part by the Yurok Tribe's Wildlife Program have led to cautious exploration of reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild.

The proposal, having secured a memorandum of understanding from the tribe, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, California Department of Parks and Recreation and the nonprofit Ventana Wildlife Society, now faces further studies and fine-tuning before it's presented for final approval to the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In the words of Redwood National and State Parks' Chief Resource Management and Science Coordinator Dave Roemer, “What could be cooler than seeing those birds flying over the redwoods and linking the past to the present, as well as to the future?”