Condors Captured in Sespe Sanctuary, Will Be Relocated : Wildlife: Four vultures will be moved to safer area in Santa Barbara County. Four others have been killed in mishaps.

After a series of disastrous mishaps that killed half the California condors still in the wild, biologists on Monday captured the remaining four survivors in the Ventura County backcountry and prepared to move them to a safer and more remote area.

Wildlife biologists shot a net over the four giant vultures as they fed on carrion high on a ridge in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. The condors were carried in kennels to a nearby holding pen where they will await their relocation to Lion Canyon in the rugged hills of northern Santa Barbara County.

The four condors had been bred in captivity and released in the sanctuary as part of a multiyear effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the California condor from extinction.

The birds will leave the sanctuary Nov. 17 for transfer to the Lion Canyon site 60 miles to the northwest.

The same day, five young condors hatched in captive breeding programs at the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos will be transported to the Lion Canyon site. There, the two groups will be held in separate pens until Dec. 8 when they will be released into the wild once more.

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Officials called the birds’ capture a “last resort” for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s California Condor Project, which is charged with returning the giant vultures from the brink of extinction to a viable wild population.

The birds’ capture culminated nearly two years of mishaps for the program that saw one bird die after drinking antifreeze and three others die after colliding with power lines and poles. “Our biggest fear was that we might lose another bird to power lines before the new ones are released, and that has been allayed,” said Robert Mesta, coordinator for the Condor Recovery Team, a group of 10 experts from the Western United States. “It would be irresponsible for us not to move them knowing what we know now.”

Biologists were forced to abandon the Sespe Condor Sanctuary, about 10 miles north of Fillmore, because it proved too close to civilized areas for the birds, which can fly 100 miles in a day. In addition, oil companies drill near the area and power lines are nearby, although many are buried underground. Both Castaic and Pyramid lakes, popular recreation areas, are easily within their range as well.

A 50% mortality rate is not unusual and even considered good in the wild, said Lloyd Kiff, head biologist on the team during the years that saw the capture of the last wild condor in 1987 and the release of the first zoo-bred birds in 1992.

“In the east we had to release hundreds of peregrine falcons to get a handful of breeding pairs,” Kiff said. “Peregrines are now coming off the endangered species list in most areas of North America.”

Kiff, who is now director of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, said he is still optimistic for the success of the program.

“It can be done,” he said, citing the falcons’ success.

But Kiff said he would recommend that the four surviving animals be held back and not released with the five new young, or at least released only one at a time so they would not show their bad habits to the new birds.

“One bird won’t take off to the old grounds, but if you put them all out at once, they might take off and head back to the Sespe,” he said.

Kiff was the biologist who signed the order in 1987 to capture the last condor remaining in the wild to bolster a captive breeding program and create the largest and most diverse gene pool possible, an essential element for a successful program.

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There are now 75 living California condors, with 71 in zoos in Los Angeles and San Diego and a third breeding facility in Idaho.

The California condor, which once numbered in the thousands and roamed from Canada to Baja California, was near extinction in 1982 and 1983 with only 22 or 23 birds alive.

The team of scientists, with Kiff as the leader, decided that captive breeding was the only chance to save the species. They chose the Sespe Condor Sanctuary area as the preferred release site because it had the greatest number of nests. That led biologists to believe that the birds would be most likely to stay in the area and use the historic roosts.

The first four were released into the wild in January, 1991, along with two Andean condors to increase the number of the large social birds in the sanctuary area.

But condors are birds that learn from adults how to fly, forage, nest and avoid danger, and biologists were fearful from the beginning that the young birds would find power poles too attractive as roosts.

To reduce the hazards, Southern California Edison, Senneca Oil Co. and Santa Fe Energy spent a combined $400,000 to put power lines near the sanctuary area underground.

In addition, the biologists attempted to lure them into the remote areas of the sanctuary with fresh calf carcasses and tried hazing them when they ventured into inhabited areas.

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But the birds are curious. They are attracted to water at Castaic and Pyramid lakes and that brought them near the dangerous trappings of man, Mesta said.

“It wasn’t enough,” Mesta said of those efforts. He said biologists did not want to capture the animals because they want to minimize the amount of contact they have with humans in order to keep them wild.

“We’ve lost half of them and now we’re saying ‘enough is enough.’ Let’s trap them and try something new.”

“We hope this will solve the problem,” Mesta said. “We’ve learned the hard way.”

New Condor Site The four remaining California condors in the wild were captured Monday in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in Ventura County. The giant birds will be released in a more remote area of Santa Barbara County on Dec. 8 Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service