6 California Condors Released Into the Wild : Wildlife: The giant vultures, including four captured in Ventura County, take flight in Santa Barbara’s backcountry.

California condors once again flew free in the wild Wednesday after wildlife biologists released six of the giant vultures from a holding compound high on a smooth rock outcropping overlooking rural Cuyama Valley in Santa Barbara’s backcountry.

Within minutes after biologists opened the doors at 11:15 a.m., Xewe, the oldest of the six birds and the only experienced flier in the group, took flight, gliding 80 yards down Lion Canyon in this remote edge of the Los Padres National Forest.

Five minutes later, a young bird known only as No. 88 spread his wings and took flight for the first time in his life, flying an equal distance to a nearby rock.

The remaining four birds, all between the ages of 7 and 9 months, stretched wings that spread into nine- to 10-foot spans, some slowly pivoting in the sun as if to display their coats.

They lofted for short hops, took turns feeding at a calf carcass laid out for them by biologists, and occasionally jockeyed for position with the older and more dominant Xewe.

“This is a great show,” said Robert Mesta, program coordinator for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Condor Recovery Project. “They’re so active compared to the other birds in earlier releases.”

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Lloyd Kiff, who led the Condor Recovery Team from 1986 until earlier this year, said it was gratifying to see the birds back in the wild. On Nov. 7, biologists captured the only four condors in the wild at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in the rugged hills of northern Ventura after a yearlong series of accidents from man-made hazards that left four other condors dead.

“I felt bad when they had to come in for a while,” Kiff said. “The fits and starts in the program are hard on all of us.”

Biologists intend to lure the carrion-eating birds north, beyond the Cuyama Valley, over the Caliente Range of sharply carved mountains and into the Carrizo Plain, a 200,000-acre reserve managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the Nature Conservancy and the California Department of Fish and Game.

Feeding in that area, which is rich in deer and elk as well as cattle and other large animals, will provide a natural food source for the birds and keep them away from the dangers of civilization, said Marc M. Weitzel, project leader for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Condor Recovery Project.

The condors are back where they belong, in the wilds above the Cuyama Valley, said author and preservationist Robert O. Easton, who accompanied his father on an expedition to the Lion Canyon site in 1934. “The sky was full of condors” then, Easton recalled Wednesday at an observation point near the release site.

“They’re very curious and they look down at you with this red eye peering out from this red head and you really feel like you’re back in the Pleistocene era,” said Easton, referring to the period when condors were plentiful throughout North America.

Easton, who has written books and magazine stories on the condor, said the wildlife agencies had given up on the birds as already extinct.

“The full wheel of history is coming full circle,” he said. “Here they are back in an area where the modern preservation effort began.”

The remote Lion Canyon, which is an historical feeding area for the birds, is also a sacred site for the Chumash because of its rock formations and cave paintings, said Tony Romero, an elder in the Chumash community who lives on the Santa Ynez Reservation.

The birds have been held in an oblong box on the white outcropping since Nov. 17 to give them time to get used to their new surroundings before their release.

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The five young birds--four males and one female who weighed up to 23 pounds--were transported to the area from captive breeding programs in the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos.

Xewe, along with three other condors that had been released earlier to fly in the wild of the Sespe, were taken to the Lion Canyon compound from the Sespe Sanctuary after their capture in November.

Three of the Sespe birds were returned to a holding site in the Sespe earlier this week and will be brought back and released at Lion Canyon one at a time over the next several weeks.

The three could not be left inside a pen in the Lion Canyon area because the young, inexperienced birds might have run into the electric fencing surrounding the compound that keeps bear and other predators out.

Staggering the releases will prevent the older birds from abandoning the younger birds, or leading them back to the Sespe 60 miles southeast of the Lion Canyon site, Weitzel said.

“If you’ve got four birds thinking, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ you may have lost them from the program,” Weitzel said, referring to biologists’ intentions to capture the birds and use them only for breeding stock if they persistently return to the Sespe.

Biologists chose the remote Lion Canyon area--situated about 35 miles north of Ojai along California 33 through the rural and sparsely populated Cuyama Valley--in hopes the birds will stay away from civilization.

“There are no power wires up here,” said Chumash elder Romero, gesturing toward the clear sky. “This is an old area for them. This is home for them.”

Condor Release Six California condors were released to fly in the wild Wednesday, high in the mountains of Los Padres National Forest above the Cuyama Valley in a remote area of Santa Barbara County. Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service