While most news for imperiled species is quite dire this year, North America’s largest flying bird is bucking the trend. California condors came frighteningly close to extinction: in 1982, just 22 birds survived in the wild. Those birds were captured and a last-ditch captive breeding effort began in earnest. This summer marked a truly amazing milestone in that extinction prevention effort: the hatching of the 1,000th California condor chick. Even better, that chick hatched in Zion National Park—in the wild where the birds belong.