Five Andean Condors Are Sent to Colombia as Part of Rescue
Five young male Andean condors were shipped from Los Angeles to Colombia Saturday night for release in the Andes as part of a program to save their cousins, the endangered California condor.
The condors, raised at the Los Angeles Zoo, were put on board Avianca Flight 73 and will be taken to a protected site at the 12,000-foot elevation, about 25 miles east of Bogota.
The male birds are all about a year old, weigh about 30 pounds and have 10 1/2-foot wingspans, said Deborah Ullman Pollack, a Los Angeles Zoo spokeswoman.
Biologists are using the Andean condors as stand-ins in a project aimed at acquiring proper methods and locations for the anticipated release of the California condors into the wild in five to 10 years.
A group of female Andean condors were released in the wild in California last year in a similar experiment that is still continuing. The female Andean condors will eventually will be returned to Colombia.
There are 30 known California condors, 14 at the Los Angeles Zoo and 16 at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in Escondido.
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