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COUNTYWIDE : Private Sector Aids Condors’ Release

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The biologists are clothed by Patagonia, the office is powered by Apple Computer, and whenever a newborn chick needs a ride, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department is at the ready with a helicopter airlift.

In a time of severe government cutbacks, an unusual combination of corporate and government sponsorship makes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department’s California condor project a success, officials said Saturday.

“It’s taken cooperation not unlike the Normandy invasion to launch the California condor back to its rightful place in the world,” said Robert Mesta, the Fish and Wildlife Department’s condor recovery program coordinator. “Support for the California condor is coming from the unlikeliest of places.”

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Convinced the condor would become extinct if left in the wild, fish and wildlife biologists removed the last condors from the rugged hills of northern Ventura County in April, 1987. Since then more than 60 new chicks have been raised in an extensive captive breeding program sponsored by the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Aided by donations of time and money from private companies and $15 million in government funding, biologists reintroduced two young California condors into their native habitat in January. Two more will be added this winter, a step toward an eventual goal of releasing 100 or so of the vultures by the year 2000.

Mesta said that goal won’t be reached without the continued support of companies like Pacific Bell, which erected a number of modified telephone poles to provide platforms for condor food, or Southern California Edison, which agreed to bury power lines that crossed the birds’ flight paths.

Clothed in donated Patagonia outerwear, a crew of 10 field biologists works around the clock monitoring the condors with $10,000 worth of telescopes, tripods and binoculars donated by the Hearst Foundation.

If a condor flies out of sight, biologists use donated radio equipment to pinpoint the bird’s new location. By next year, they will be tracking the condors’ every move with donated satellite monitoring equipment and computer mapping systems, Mesta said.

When long distances must be covered, researchers ride on all-terrain vehicles donated by Honda and Yamaha. The young condors’ food--stillborn calf carcasses--is donated by a group of Ventura County dairy farmers and packed in by llamas donated by a rancher.

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Even the rustic ranch house that serves as a base of operations has been improved through private-sector donations. In 1988 the Chula Vista Electric Co. provided a much-needed electrical upgrade free of charge.

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