♪♪ - When it comes to wildlife, we think, they're up in the forest and deserts and rivers and lakes far away from us, but really, there's a lot of wildlife that's living amongst us within our cities.

♪♪ Learning how to live with them in those urban environments is quite important.

♪♪ - It is a magnificent thing to see animals come to our hospital orphaned or at death's door, see them through the rehabilitation process and then to be able to release them.

It is just the most wonderful experience.

- We're connected to the next thing, which is connected to the next thing.

And if you pull one piece out of that tapestry, it's not the same.

- I enjoy being curious about the world around me.

I like going to an area where around every tree or under every rock is something new, something interesting that I don't completely understand yet.

- Animals and the animal world are teachers, are educators to us.

It's not just human beings at the top of the food chain, that we are learning from each other.

It's a circle.

- As humans, we grow and adapt, and animals do the same.

There will always be challenges when humans and wildlife share the same space.

Liberty Wildlife lives at the heart of this intersection.

- Wildlife is an integral part of this world we live in.

We're no more important than they are.

They play a role that would make our lives completely diminished if they didn't exist.

The joy of watching them in my yard, the joy of-of seeing what they do, watching their life processes, uh, they're beautiful creatures, and they have as much right to be here as we do.

- Studying wildlife gives me a focal point for understanding the world we live in.

It's not because, you know, learning about a-a condor or a coyote or a kit fox is going to save us from-from anything, but it does reveal things that otherwise might have gone missed.

- What I really love about birds is their diversity.

You know, we have everything from California condors the largest free flying bird in-in North America with a wingspan approaching ten feet that can soar literally 300 miles in a day without a wingbeat, just utilizing updrafts.

And then on the other hand, you have a Ruby-throated hummingbird, that migrates across the Gulf of Mexico, and he never stops flapping his wings for the entire time.

How do they do that?

Why do they do that?

- In our traditional teachings, many of the animals, many of the birds are messengers.

They also are the ones that, um, carry our prayers up to the Creator.

Itza-chu, the eagle, is the one that carries those messages, those prayers and those blessings to the higher being.

We say, "Aheeiyeh."

We say, "thank you," through our songs and our different dances that we do.

- These animals have their own life.

While they're walking in, and foraging through the forest, they live these lives of survival.

They live through the seasons.

They live through being a mother or father.

And they were once a cub.

And they have to go through their struggles.

This wisdom that's passed on from these animals to us to carry on and respect that is why we do offerings, is why we bless them, and when they do come into our home, or when we gift them to someone it's because we want to honor them with that spirit.

- Everything on this earth, be it a boulder, a river, a tree, a canyon, all have a spiritual essence.

And that spiritual essence must be recognized and respected.

- All living things are connected by water.

Across the country, urban rivers have been rediscovered and reclaimed.

In Arizona, the Salt River runs through Metro Phoenix.

The dry riverbed has been revitalized by Rio Reimagined.

On its banks sits a refuge for wildlife and people.

- One of the advantages of having Liberty Wildlife where it is, is that we are able to interact with wildlife in an urban setting.

Hopefully, that will be a positive interaction for wildlife and the people that are involved.

- Liberty Wildlife was founded by Dr. Kathy Orr, a veterinarian who started caring for wildlife in her backyard.

Today, Liberty Wildlife is on a six-acre sustainable campus.

- When we bought this piece of land, it was a gravel pit.

There was not a blade of anything but tumbleweed.

So, we put in a wetland, and it's a joyous place.

You know, you never know whether the-the Canada geese is going to come flying in, you don't know whether the mallards are going to come and set up nesting.

We've had herons that danced in the windows.

It's just fun.

- One of my favorite parts of touring people around Liberty Wildlife is that if they look just a little bit further north, they see the I-10 freeway, and they see Sky Harbor.

And we've got this bustling hub of transportation.

But in between all of that and their house is this-this area of wildlife.

People start looking more, then, at the animals in their own yard.

- Animals keep the natural world in balance by pollinating, pruning, and propagating.

Spring reminds us the cycle of life begins again.

To ensure the success of wildlife, the Arizona Game and Fish Department manages hunting, protects habitat, and even rescues individual animals.

- Those individuals sometimes get themselves into trouble, they get injured, they get dehydrated, they-they need a little bit of help.

And that's really where Liberty wildlife comes in and helps us out immensely.

- The first year that I was at Liberty Wildlife, we took in, I think it was 87 animals, and we were so proud of ourselves.

Forty years later, we took in 12,156 animals.

- Liberty Wildlife benefits, animals and people through research and conservation, education, and the Non-Eagle Feather Repository, which supports Native American cultural heritage.

- Morning.

- Hello, hey, I called earlier.

- Oh great, how can I help you?

- Every animal that comes in here is compromised in some way.

It's an orphan, it's been poisoned, it's been hit by a car, it's been stuck on a sticky trap.

All of those are things that they didn't cause themselves.

- We do take in all native wildlife from Arizona.

Our daily care team, they have to learn to deal with the avian species, mammals, reptiles.

The diets are all different, the care is different, and everybody has to be trained on how to care for them properly, so that that animal is given everything that it needs so that it can have the best outcome.

- The hospital at Liberty Wildlife is set up like any medical facility.

From intake, to triage and surgery, animals are in the care of highly trained staff and volunteers.

- The animals that are coming in here are not people's pets.

They don't have a steward to care for them for their lifetime.

They, you know, don't really have a voice to ask for help.

And so when people find them and drop them off here, it's up to us to be that voice for them.

I have a Board certification in avian medicine specifically, and at Liberty Wildlife, the majority of the animals that we see are birds.

When we're having new veterinarians, or technicians that are coming in, or new volunteers who are wanting to get into the veterinary field, I'm able to help teach them very specific things.

How do we manage certain problems differently in a bird versus a mammal?

His right foot, digit number four, I don't know why he has all the little scrapes on him.

I don't know how long he was down for.

He was found to be really wobbly and ataxic, so kind of just acting like he was drunk.

And see how he kind of flops his head that way.

That's him being a little neuro, but he is better.

Being able to... give back by providing care for wildlife is just so rewarding.

- For all animals treated at Liberty Wildlife, it's a priority to keep their wild instincts intact.

In some cases, animals arrive mal imprinted.

They identify with humans who fed or tried to raise them instead of their own species.

Imprinted animals cannot survive in the wild.

- So, depending on what their needs are, their next step is to go outside and they go into a smaller cage, where they can rehabilitate and get used to moving that wing if they had a broken wing and get it stretched and get their own physical therapy going.

And then they go into a flight cage.

- The 180-foot flight cage is designed so birds can bank and turn.

It's the final test of a raptor's ability to fend for itself.

- Making sure that an animal is prepared to be released into the wild, there are several factors that go into that.

You have to think about the livelihood that that animal would have, you know, if it had a fracture, is that limb or wing able to sustain what it needs to sustain.

- Raptors need to be strong to migrate.

Swainson's hawks breed across western North America and fly south to winter in Argentina.

A 12,000-mile round trip each year.

- You kind of have a window there that you have to be able to release these birds when they're injured, and they need to be heading back which direction they're going from.

The one hawk that we were focusing on today is a big female, and she had, unfortunately, been shot.

As far as wing breaks go, it was a good break, so we were very optimistic that her healing would take place.

The beautiful thing about her was she's strong, she's big.

We're just really excited to see her get back to her life and, uh, take five other kids and young adults with her.

She looks good.

- Okay.

- Her eyes are good.

She's clear in the mouth.

She's a really good weight.

It feels good.

We work tightly with Arizona Game and Fish.

And they're the ones that put the transmitter on her.

- A cell signal from a transmitter relays a bird's location to reveal where they travel, eat, and breed.

- Really, what we're looking at there is to identify those hotspots that are important to particular species, important to multiple species for a migration corridor.

We'll want to make sure that we don't put up infrastructure in those areas such as wind turbines, where you can have impacts not only to raptors here in Arizona, but impacts to raptors trying to pass through on a-on a safe path through their wintering grounds.

- This one's big mama.

Days like today are probably the most rewarding and one of the main reasons why I do what I do.

When you see one that comes in that's injured, and you're able to see them go through the process of healing and then being released back into the wild.

I mean, how great is that?

All right, kid.

[laughter] - Not all rehabilitated animals can be released.

Some individuals become Liberty Wildlife residents.

- You can save a life.

And there has to be a quality of life to save it.

You know, that's-that's critical, no suffering.

The second thing, then, of course, is those who are injured, could never survive in the wild.

But they're still vibrant.

- Then we can work to get them on our education permit and use them as education ambassadors.

- So they kind of get a job change.

If they have the right temperament, and we can work them into that program, it's a whole 'nother life for them where they can reach out to all those people - Well, I've got Jan and Doris behind me, and they have Lobo, the Harris hawk.

Since he was young, when he came to us, he wasn't able to learn how to hunt out in the wild.

And so therefore it was determined that he was non releasable.

And he became one of our flight birds.

By coming close and actually being within the same space really can make a difference.

They can go out, and drive down the road and say, hey, there's that bird that I just saw at the wildlife sanctuary.

It's literally down my road.

- One evening, Dr. Orr was working with a couple of other volunteers and myself and we heard a car drive in the driveway and when this older gentleman came in-in the room and he had a-a bundle under his arm.

It looked like his jacket that had been rolled up.

He put the jacket down on the table we were working on and it unfurled and lo and behold inside it was a great horned owl.

It was in the throes of dying, which it did.

And Dr. Orr, she said what happened?

And he kind of looked at the owl, and he looked up at her.

And he said, If I'd known how beautiful it was, I never would have shot it.

He was grief stricken.

He was just horrified what had happened.

If I could find him now, I would thank him because it created our educational program.

We went, okay, we can fix these guys up, we can send them back out into the wild, but until we teach people the beauty and the benefits of this creature, it's just going to continue to happen.

- There's a Black Phoebe up in this tree.

What kind of birds are going to be found in this vegetation?

- This is great for Marsh Wren.

You can already hear one calling.

I go birding because it's-- it allows me to escape just the stresses of life to go immerse myself in nature.

I think it's fun to watch birds.

- He's always had that good sense of being a good steward of-of God's creation.

Um, but it sure has brought us now to places where just right in our own city, we have great wetlands.

And we have Herons, and Osprey and Bald Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks and Harris Hawks that live right in our neighborhood in Glendale.

He has really awakened my awareness of how much in this urban area that I grew up in, there are these pockets and these places of beautiful creatures.

- Habitat like this is not common anymore.

And so by mimicking it here, we're providing the local wildlife that lives around Liberty, a place where they can get food, shelter and water.

- We're really working hard on creating a way that kids are involved at an early, early age.

Along the line came Logan.

He was just this shy little guy, but with the most amazing passion I have ever seen.

He was a child biologist.

- This is Gizmo.

He is an Arizona Gray Squirrel.

All of these squirrels were owned as pets illegally.

- All of a sudden Logan is talking to the public, and he's doing demonstrations, and he's relating this reptile to this reptile, and this is how they work.

And he's got this vast knowledge and this vast presence.

And Grayson is gonna come along and do the same thing.

And I kinda think that someday they're gonna be famous and someday they're gonna save a species.

- Come here, buddy.

- Wow, awesome!

- Ooh... - I have a social anxiety disorder.

So sometimes it can be really difficult for me to interact with others.

Being at Liberty and being in a place where I'm comfortable with animals has helped me to manage that over the years so that I can better interact with other people.

- This is Beetlejuice.

Uh, he is a California Kingsnake.

This species is found all over North America.

And this particular subspecies is found throughout the southwestern United States.

Getting to see people's wonder and amazement about the natural world is-is something that I really get out of volunteering here.

Would you guys like to pet his belly scales?

- Yes!

- His belly scales are called scutes.

And that's what allows him to grip the ground which makes him slither.

- I have loved seeing my sons apart from me, away from dad, away from mom, um, blossoming and being themselves and exhibiting the gifts that, as a dad, I know they have.

I am thrilled that he will use all of his senses.

When we're walking and birding, he hears it, he labels it, he points it out to me.

I cannot see them, um, as hard as I try sometimes, but he knows exactly where it is and what it is.

And I could see him becoming an ornithologist.

I-I could see him becoming a biologist, a-a researcher, a teacher, a great teacher.

- There's a way to introduce kids to wildlife, and to reptiles, into all kinds of things that's not scary.

It's fascinating.

And it has to start when they're young.

They won't be afraid of it if they're introduced to it early on.

They're going to be the environmentally-minded kids who embrace nature.

And we need more of that.

- The Verde Canyon Railway is a heritage railroad that runs through a wild and scenic riparian canyon.

Before the whistle blows, guests meet some of Liberty Wildlife's educational ambassadors.

- This is Bailey.

Bailey is a 35-year-old Turkey Vulture who has been doing education for ten years longer than I have.

He's a great example to the public about why, when you find a baby, you need to get it to a place like Liberty Wildlife, rather than trying to take care of it yourself because, um, he's imprinted on people.

And that's the only reason he can't, uh, be a free bird.

- Let me introduce you to Hunny here.

They're a little unusual, the Harris Hawks, when you compare them to other birds of prey who are solitary animals for the most part.

Harris Hawks, on the other hand, have earned themselves the nickname the wolves of the sky, which is very well deserved because they travel and hunt and live in these family units.

- Every ambassador's personal story reveals the role its family plays in keeping our environment in balance.

- Bailey here, this is a sanitation engineer.

This is what he does in the world.

They eat huge amounts of bacteria and disease.

Their digestive system kills all that.

And everything that comes out the back end is sterile.

So their job in the world is to help curb the spread of disease.

- Over the years, I've had the pleasure of meeting Megan and Jan and Joe and all of the other volunteers with Liberty Wildlife.

They are the reason that our customers gain a new respect for wildlife.

- One Ambassador gets to ride the rails.

Aurora the Bald Eagle is unable to fly free, but a train ride in the canyon gives her a chance to soar.

- This is Aurora, and Aurora is a female bald eagle.

And she's 20 years old this year.

For the first three years, a bald eagle has a dark beak, dark head, and dark tail.

And at age three, they begin to change and by the time they hit five years old, they'll have the white head, white tail, and yellow beak.

And the boys and girls look just like each other.

So, for as big as that bird is, that bird only weighs in at 12.5 pounds.

Aurora at ten weeks old in her nest up in Wisconsin had fell over in her nest.

Stick from the nest punctured her left eye.

She's got no depth perception.

Her ability to hunt in the wild is ruined by that injury.

Her coming out and riding the train, it's a big treat for her.

As the train moves up through the canyon, usually we're gone between 12 and 14 miles an hour.

I wasn't lifting her up.

She was just floating up off the glove.

And for her, that's just like flying.

Aurora wave back to him.

There you go!

If I didn't take the time to train these guys and bring them over to where they're tame enough to do the things they do, a lot of those experiences would be lost.

They wouldn't happen.

- People just soften up when they meet the eagles.

When they see a little Peregrine Falcon or that tiny owl, they realize how precious and how fragile the environment is.

And they might just tread lighter the next time they go out.

♪♪ - Raptors are-are one of those species that if you didn't see him on that light pole or on-on the top of that power pole, perched on the top of that tree, you'd notice.

There would be something missing in the environment.

I think the special thing about Raptors is that they're large, and they're conspicuous.

They're predators and hunters.

And there's that fascination with the-the predator prey interactions that you see in the wild.

- Raptors keep insect and rodent populations at healthy levels.

For owl hatchlings, that means roof rat for dinner.

- Uh, without those raptors, you'd have outbreaks and overpopulation that would cause damage to crops and-and real monetary impacts.

It's important to make sure we've got good, healthy, vibrant raptor populations.

♪♪ - As a top line predator, raptors are an indicator species.

They reveal the health of their ecosystem.

If there are toxins in the environment, these contaminants will affect predators and prey.

DDT is a pesticide that accumulates in the bodies of animals who eat insects and fish.

In the early 1960s, people around the world became aware the chemical was pushing raptors to the brink of extinction.

- High levels of-of DDT, DDE will make the eggshells too thin for them to be able to hatch.

So, when we start seeing issues with that sort of thing, that's really how we're able to have an indicator that something's going wrong in that environment.

- The use of DDT was banned in 1972.

The following year, Bald Eagles were one of the first animals protected by the Endangered Species Act.

At the time, there were only 12 mating pairs in Arizona.

Today, there are 92 known breeding sites.

- A lot of the traditional eagle territories where you would expect to see a Bald Eagle are occupied by nesting pairs.

So when young birds are establishing a territory of their own, they don't have many options.

- As that happens, they're also tied to water and water is a restricted, limited resource here in Arizona.

So we're starting to see Bald Eagles move into less typical places, cities and golf courses and close to community ponds where you've got fish stock.

We're starting to see them in people's backyards, which has been really cool to see.

- When we first moved into the house, we had no clue that there were Bald Eagles.

When we found out, you know, it was like winning the lotto.

Our backyard has basically turned into a wildlife refuge.

- One of the nests is right on the edge of a housing community right next to a gravel pit.

So there's active construction, there's active living going on in this area.

And-and this pair has been extremely successful in raising and producing young on an annual basis.

- We've seen probably about 16 baby eagles raised in this nest.

It is absolutely fascinating to watch the eagles raise their young.

And we look forward to this every year.

It's eagle season.

- This particular nest has really experienced adult team.

They build the nest together.

The dad will bring the sticks in.

Mom rearranges them to the way she wants.

- The nesting cycle is a period of critical benchmarks for an egg to become a hatchling.

One parent must be on the nest to keep the eggs warm 24 hours a day for 35 days straight.

When hatchlings emerge, these baby birds need constant food and protection.

- They teach their babies how to fly.

They teach their babies how to eat and how to hunt, and how to defend themselves.

- Ravens will come in and-and kill a very young bald eagle nestling without those adults there to protect them.

It's been great that these eagles have been able to acclimate to those areas and still be successful.

But, it's also important to realize that those eagles that are in the wild portions of our state, they're not as tolerant of human activity so close.

- To make sure human activity doesn't drive parents to abandon their nests.

breeding sites in the city and remote recreation areas are monitored by Arizona Bald Eagle Nest Watchers.

- If there happens to be a problem that I perceive or somebody reports to me here in the neighborhood, I call Game and Fish immediately.

There's just too many things that can happen to these eagles and their nesting areas.

- Once a hatchling's feathers have grown, it's time for a flight test.

When young birds can hunt, they leave the nest in search of their own territory.

- As the Bald Eagles moved into the urban areas, we've got eagles and nestlings that are a little naive, they tend to get themselves into trouble moving around a landscape that wasn't built to be safe for eagles.

Bald Eagle conservation, raptor conservation, wildlife conservation is really not any one entity that accomplishes it.

It's really about a partnership amongst a wide variety of entities.

- The Salt River Project and Arizona Public Service have avian protection programs to reduce risks for birds and prevent power outages.

- Some of the larger birds that we've started to see, the eagles and the Red-tailed hawks, can land on the lines and with their wingspans, they can touch the pole and can cause themselves serious injury or even death.

- So we've partnered with, SRP and APS to put transmitters on the nestlings that are fledging from those urban areas, and see what habitats urban habitats they're using, where they're perching, and how that overlays with the power grid.

- We're trying to proactively guard that infrastructure.

We can take that data in-house to try and determine where we have potential risks.

- These longer insulators allow the larger birds like the eagles to be able to land and to be able to safely fly off without being injured or causing an outage on the powerlines.

- It's pretty amazing to see how much effort the utility companies put into this Avian Protection Program that they all have.

- When a line worker climbs a pole to move a nest from an active powerline to a nesting platform, they don't know if they'll find eggs or hatchlings.

If the parents don't return to the relocated nest within a few hours, Liberty Wildlife steps in.

- We do have foster parents here.

We can put that baby in with them and they act as foster parents to take care of the baby until it's time for it to be released.

- At Liberty, we take stringent efforts to keep these birds from having too much contact with people.

If they do, they are camouflaged, they use puppets to feed, and they don't talk, make noise.

- Imprinting is a process that can't be undone.

If an animal's tame, you can wild it up again.

But if it's imprinted, it does not know who it is.

- After incubation and hatching, nestlings can be raised by a foster parent of the same species.

Both, female and male adults can be adopted parents.

- When we first started this program, we had these two great horned owls and they, one of them had been in the education program and all of the sudden, it's just like, "Nope, "I don't want any more of this, not doing it."

So we said, "Let's try Hogan in foster."

"So you walk in with this little bitty white fuzz ball Great Horned Owl, totally helpless.

You know, just there... uh... And you put it down in the cage.

And, you know, my worst fear is, "Oh my God, "this is gonna be carnage.

I can't take it."

But that's not what happened.

[hooting] Takes one look at it.

And he goes over and he picks up a mouse and he starts to feed it.

Yes!

♪♪ I can't tell you how many babies he raised.

And he was ferocious.

If he had babies in that in that cage, you forget going in.

Nobody ever went in.

And his babies were the best non-imprinted little tigers of the sky you ever saw.

- We have no idea how many of them that are out there right now, that could have been raised by Hogan, or one of our other foster moms.

It just gives you a lot of hope.

- A lot of time people think, "Oh, it's so cute.

"I want to raise it.

I want to keep it."

And then it's not so cute anymore because they grew up and they're animals.

They're wild animals.

They're meant to have talons and beaks and claws and all those things that help them survive.

They don't do well in captivity.

The saddest are the ones that are intentionally raised for the pet trade.

- So this is Groot the coatimundi.

These guys are related to raccoons.

Groot has never lived out in the wild.

So therefore, he has no idea how to survive on his own out there.

Unfortunately, somebody got a hold of him in Indiana and had him as a pet there.

The authorities did step in and confiscate him.

We like to do behavioral enrichment here to make sure that our animals are still getting some of their natural instincts taken care of-- their foraging, their hunting, their digging like he would.

So he's eating cockroaches.

We call 'em cockroach eggs.

[chuckles] He has sharp teeth, he has very sharp claws that he uses for climbing.

We won't stick our hands in there, hey-- because that's where he gets aggressive.

We don't ever believe in bringing any wild animals into your home to make into a pet.

They belong out in the wild.

- It has been said, when an animal goes extinct, it's like losing a letter of the alphabet.

We don't know how the absence of one species affects all others.

In the early 1980s, there were only 22 California condors left in the world.

- Had we lost the condors, I think we would have lost a lot more than just the species as a singular critter.

It would have been even more terrible now that we've realized that the condor was going extinct for reasons we can actually do something about.

- In 1993, the Peregrine Fund began breeding condors in Idaho at its World Center for Birds of Prey, and releasing them into their native habitat.

- We love Liberty Wildlife, because they have taught us how to do everything from drawing blood on a bird, how to X-ray a bird.

- In the summer of 2000, The Peregrine Fund field team saw a condor die.

- We were able to recover it and take it in and find out that it died of lead poisoning.

I began thinking, "Well, where in the world "could there be that much lead?"

We're not just talking about an exposure here and there, we're talking about 80% of the population showing really, really high levels of lead.

The lead levels peak right around the peak of hunting season, and then they decline.

So that was the "aha" moment.

And we developed a strategy to begin sharing the information with hunters and asking for their voluntary support to use non-lead ammunition or recover the remains of carcasses that had been shot and left in the field.

- Oftentimes, a hunter doesn't necessarily take the entire animal that they have hunted, they'll leave portions behind, which does actually provide food for wildlife.

And California condors, they are scavengers.

- We found that a single shot can leave as many as 400 fragments in a gut pile.

- It takes a piece of lead the size of my freckle, to take down a condor.

That's the biggest bird out there.

And it's heartbreaking to watch them die.

- The effects of lead in condors is basically the same as it is in any other vertebrate species.

It affects the neural system.

We see that the paralysis of their gut is one of the first signs.

- With lead poisoning parts of the body become paralyzed.

A bird's crop is a muscular pouch that stores food.

Crop stasis is when a bird's muscles can't move food into its stomach.

- They gorge themselves because they're starving.

The muscles aren't doing their job to move food through their system, and then they die of starvation while continually feeding.

Crop stasis is when we immediately transport them to our partners at Liberty Wildlife because we can't deal with that.

- We had gotten in condor 455 and she was in pretty dire straits.

And it was a lead toxicity situation.

We had her six months, which is a really long time.

She had lost a tremendous amount of weight.

And this bird just kept fighting.

She had a will to live.

She wanted to keep going.

And we could just see it in her face.

[voice shaking] And, um... you know, they're extremely emotional birds as far as they're very bright.

They watch what you're doing.

They're extremely intelligent, and she was just a fighter.

She just had it in her.

She never lost that light in her eye.

- A treatment for lead poisoning is chelation, which binds the heavy metal, so it can be passed from the body.

- Nobody knows how many times you can chelate an animal that it doesn't chelate anymore.

- She needed a blood transfusion, even though the lead had come down in her blood.

We were able to have another condor here, and we were able to get a blood transfusion in her.

And that was the turnaround moment for her.

- For condors, they have to be at least five or six years of age to breed.

They're usually not successful until eight or nine years of age.

If you can keep birds alive long enough, they will reproduce.

- She met back up with her mate.

They paired up and she finally had laid an egg and was able to raise a chick.

- When an animal gets to be released, and then that animal propagates in the wild and contributes to enhancing a population that is endangered.

I mean, that's the reason we do it.

- For 30 years of the Peregrine Fund has worked with a network of State and Federal land managers to save the species.

Today there are over 500 California condors living in the wild.

- It takes us as a collective, to choose to one, investigate these things.

And then turn it into, "Well, what do we need to do to make this work?"

That's where my passion comes in.

Being a life-long hunter and a conservation biologist that has some information gets me really excited.

And in actuality, the hunters are the only ones that can solve the problem.

- If people knew how simple the solution is, it doesn't have to be hard.

If people quit using lead bullets, the problem would go away.

- Unless we inspire people to act on that, then we're really not doing conservation.

We're just doing science, or we're doing wildlife health.

It's the whole package and Liberty Wildlife plays a crucial role in that.

- In the 19th century, growing industries gave wildlife a run for its money.

Restaurants were stocked with wild game of quail, pigeon, and songbirds by market hunters.

- Now these were a group of hunters that would literally go to areas where birds were in large concentrations, and just shoot them.

Unfortunately for some species like the Passenger Pigeon, they literally shot that to extinction.

- Throughout the country, natural resources were up for grabs.

The California Gold Rush created a run on another rare commodity: eggs.

- They'd literally collect thousands and thousands of eggs off these islands.

And the really sad part is that they will do it during the breeding season.

So it almost wiped out those colonies.

- At the same time, there was a phenomenon that would consume the world's most exotic birds-- women's hats.

Plumes were traditionally used by royalty or the military, but now the Victorian trendsetters of New York City would copy Europe's latest fashion by sticking a feather in their cap.

The more exotic the bird, the higher the status of your feathers, and your social rank.

- There was no attention to whether or not the birds that were being killed for their feathers, survived or not, or whether their population disappeared.

It was just a gratification for the time.

- The most coveted feathers were breeding plumage.

Feathers males grow during mating season to entice their mates.

- These nuptial feathers that came from these colonial nesting Egrets became the most sought-after feathers and were distributed all over the world.

- The most highly insured cargo on the Titanic was a shipment of feathers headed for the milliners market of New York.

- At that time, 1912, the only thing that was worth more by weight than feathers were diamonds.

- The Gilded Age was a time when natural resources seemed endless, but some knew there were limits to nature's bounty.

In 1900, Congress passed the first wildlife law.

The Lacey Act made it illegal to poach or traffic protected wildlife.

The new law was almost impossible to enforce until a brash new President, Theodore Roosevelt, created the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The first of 51 bird sanctuaries established by executive order.

- Fortunately, women started to realize that their fashion statement was having a very, very negative effect on our bird population in the United States.

People are becoming aware of the value of the wildlife around them and the lands that support them.

Boston socialites led by Harriet Hemenway lobbied Congress to protect migratory birds.

From Albatross to Wrynecks, Wrens, and Yellowthroats, all birds that migrate are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

- The enactment of these wildlife laws and these new public land designations were great for wildlife.

However, they had a very negative impact on Native American culture.

None of those laws that protected wildlife provided any provisions that allowed Native Americans to continue to collect birds for their feathers to use in ceremonial and religious practices.

- Plume hunters killed generations of birds in an afternoon.

When feathers are collected for ceremonial use, Indigenous People take only what they need.

- The collection of feathers by Native Americans is in fact, in itself, a ceremony.

If those feathers aren't collected in such a manner, with that respect, then they don't carry that spiritual essence into the item that they're going to become.

- The loss of access to feathers is one of the most devastating impacts to Native cultures.

It criminalized traditions that were passed down for centuries.

For hundreds and hundreds of years, Native Americans have maintained a very unique relationship with all the animals in their natural world, but especially birds, and especially their feathers.

Many of those ceremonies and many of the dances associated with that regalia were lost.

- In 2010, Liberty Wildlife partnered with the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service to establish the Liberty Wildlife Non-Eagle Feather Repository.

For the first time in over a century, Native Americans have a no cost legal source of non-eagle feathers for ceremonial uses.

- To me, this is probably the most significant thing about operating the Repository.

Balancing the fact that you're dealing with somebody's religious rights, and you're doing it by providing an item that's federally regulated and protected by law.

- Feathers are definitely something that is a powerful teaching tool all throughout each stage of life.

- We have feathers in our homes, tied in our vehicles, some of us carry it in our purses or in our wallets even.

Some of us carry it and have it inside of a Bible.

Now that's how sacred feathers are to us.

- They always come to you in a good way in times of accomplishments and they're a gift of recognition.

- It's the highest honor that a Lakota man or any Indigenous man or woman can receive is a feather.

To have something like that to look back on at the end of your life and say, "Look, I was a good man, "I was the best man I was possibly able to be.

"This is the record of my life."

You know, it's quite beautiful.

Things like that should continue to today, instead of just being part of our past, you know?

- Native Americans use feathers in their ceremonial regalia because these feathers represent the attributes of that bird from which they came.

If it's an eagle, it could be power.

If it's a condor, long flight.

If it's a falcon, speed.

They all present a power and a gift that they can relate to that Native American when he adorns the regalia that possessed those feathers.

- All of this here carries power.

It carries balance.

It carries wisdom.

You know, even with my regalia here, part of these feathers were part of the-- my father's warbonnet that was given to him.

And when he passed on, they take, the took it apart.

And I don't honestly know how old those feathers are.

It's all the wisdom and the prayers that follow them they come to me, and now I get to pass them on to my children.

- All of my regalia tells a story.

It tells a story of who I am, it tells the story of my people, of my parents.

On my regalia, I was beaded two Elk that are on either side of my vest.

And the Elk carries love medicine, it's the medicine of a flute player.

The Elk also represents our traditional homeland high up into the White Mountains of Arizona.

And then I also have the color of white, and black, repeated, and that represents immature golden eagle feather that we receive.

And that also represents good medicine, it represents healing.

When I get all the way fully dressed up in my traditional regalia, I feel that energy.

I feel that backing of my ancestors.

I feel that pride.

It's just a good feeling all around.

It's what you call good medicine.

As a hoop dancer, you tell the stories through hoops.

- We design it with the colors that we like on the four directions.

Of stages of life, those seasons, there are sacred animals for each corner.

The hoop is constantly in motion moving forward and moving back.

We don't have to have this linear perspective.

That it's all circular and that we're all connected.

- Everything upon Mother Earth, we say thank you through that dance.

And so, when I make the eagle, you know, I say, thank you, "Aheeiyeh".

Thank you to Itza-chu, for allowing us to use those feathers for our traditional prayers.

- One of the things I really love about directing Liberty Wildlife Non-Eagle Feather Repository is because I can surround myself with feathers, I can feel their essence.

And it's very, very calming to me, you know, it just, it just makes me a better person.

- The Liberty Wildlife Non-Eagle Feather Repository has provided feathers to Native Americans from over 250 tribes in 45 states.

- The beauty of it is that we do it by recycling.

We recycle feathers that would normally be destroyed.

We receive feather donations from all over the United States.

You know, we get them from other rehabbers, wildlife agencies, museums, zoos.

This feather right here is the adult.

- This one right here?

- Yeah, these are the immature feathers.

And so, what this tells me right here is that this is a Harlan's hawk tail feather.

And Harlan's hawk feathers, as you know, are very, very rare.

- It's really important to make sure that the patterns match, that the size matches, that the quality is good.

It's like putting a puzzle together.

I never realized that the talent of putting puzzles together would transform itself into matching feathers from separate birds.

Every bird is different.

Of course, we're identifying species but when it comes down to the individual feather, you can see how they would transpire and how they would fit together for a piece of regalia.

♪♪ - We have this fan here; it's made in a very balanced way.

Everything's aligned, all the design is aligned, all the feather work is aligned.

But we have a fan here that represents a different way of life.

It represents where, we are not perfect.

And the way this fan was created, just to remind us that, we live in an imperfect world.

But coming together, we can make it beautiful.

- As Native peoples we're always trying to, they say, walk in two worlds.

And so, we try to maintain our traditional ways through our songs, our dances that have been passed down through the bravery of many of our ancestors.

- There are nearly seven million Native Americans in the United States today.

The majority live and work in urban areas, - Three generations, isolated from their tribal lands and their ceremonies.

We feel those are the Native Americans that can use those feathers to reconnect.

- There's a time when my regalia was taken from me.

With the story of my life, I was pulled away from it for my safety, and also for the safety of the regalia itself, because I am an alcoholic and addict.

The reason why my mom took the regalia from me was because it was not just only affecting me, it was affecting her and my siblings, and all the family, and the people that prayed upon these feathers.

It was affecting them.

I ended up homeless.

I ended up walking away from many things.

That included my dancing, that included my family, that included myself, and also my connection with Creator.

After I committed to my sobriety, after my daughter was born in 2011.

We went to go see my mom.

Out of the blue, my mom came back out with my box... [voice shaking] ...and she gave me stuff back and said, "Take it, son.

"It's time.

It's time to dance for the family again.

"You earned it."

My family honored me with my late grandfather's patch, which is he was a Code Talker.

So my whole outfit is dedicated to the Code Talkers and all Code Talkers as well who fought the battles in the wars.

To honor my elders and to honor my family, it means everything to me.

[rhythmic drumming] We are who we are.

And we're humble enough to share our culture with you and explain, what these feathers mean to us.

That's where Liberty Wildlife really comes into play.

It really helps and reconnects our community with other communities.

- As Native Peoples, you know, we are still here.

We still sing our songs, our stories.

We'll continue to use those feathers as a way of honoring and showing that appreciation, uh, and passing down those stories to the next generation.

[rhythmic drumming] ♪♪ [eagle screeching] [birds chirping] ♪♪ - The cycle continues.

Day turns to night, life to death.

When the sun rises, there is a new beginning.

And the rhythm of birth, survival and living continues.

For every species, the journey holds the beauty.

- I've been at this for a really long time.

And I've done everything from big animals to small animals.

They're all special.

When an animal comes in, they're afraid.

Sometimes they're so down, that you don't know whether this one's gonna make it or not, but you watch it progress.

And you know, it just seems like there's a will to live.

- The culmination of all that work with all the volunteers and everybody and for the care that goes into these animals.

It's the best feeling you could ever have.

- We have choices we can make, and we can predict desirable outcomes.

That's pretty awesome.

- I'm a link in the chain that helps the wildlife of Arizona.

I feel like I make a difference.

- Every day is different, every day is rewarding.

There are some sad moments, but luckily the good stuff usually outweighs the bad.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪