(Nancy Arehart / California Condor Reproduction Program )

On Saturday in Arizona, four California condors that were born and raised in captivity will take their first flight into the wild.

Since the 1980s, when there were only 22 of the birds left in the world, the Peregrine Fund has been working to restore condor populations.

One of the birds to be released is Milagra, Spanish for miracle, because she was just an egg when her mother died of bird flu and biologists rescued her from her cliffside nest. She wasn’t expected to live, but she did and she grew up at the Peregrine Fund’s Boise facility.

Jessica Schlarbaum, public information officer with the Peregrine Fund and propagation director Leah Esquivel, joined Idaho Matters to tell us more about the birds.