3 Condors With Bad Habits Are Returned to Zoo : Wildlife: The birds had migrated back to the Sespe sanctuary, where four others died in clashes with civilization. Six remain in a remote canyon north of Ojai.

Three wayward California condors were captured early Tuesday in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary and returned to the Los Angeles Zoo--most likely never to fly free again.

The three birds, first released in the sanctuary in December, 1992, were removed to a remote Santa Barbara County canyon last November after four other condors died in a yearlong series of clashes with civilization in the Sespe area.

But the three left the remote Lion Canyon area March 14 and flew to Sespe, where they resumed the same bad habits that got four of the endangered birds killed, including roosting on power lines and visiting populated areas.

Federal wildlife biologists had hoped that hunger would drive the vultures back to Lion Canyon, where they were fed calf carcasses. Five younger birds and an older one that were released there with the three wandering birds last November have remained in the canyon, about 35 miles north of Ojai.

The Sespe birds, believed not to have eaten in two weeks, were lured with carrion to enable biologists to cast nets over them as they fed.

“It looks like we’re dealing with birds that were just going to sit there and starve, in addition to going back to roosting on power poles,” said Marc M. Weitzel, project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife condor recovery program. The three birds probably will become part of the breeding stock for the captive breeding program at the Los Angeles Zoo, where they were born before they were released into the wild, Weitzel said.

He and members of the Condor Recovery Team, a nationwide group of scientists, decided not to give the birds another chance in Lion Canyon for fear they would teach bad habits to younger birds.

“Our fear is that the older birds would go back to the Sespe again and that the younger birds would tag along,” Weitzel said.

Weitzel said the move to return the birds to the zoo is not seen as a setback to the $15-million, 12-year condor recovery program.

“This is the most difficult phase of the reintroduction process--establishing a core population in the wild,” Weitzel said.

Lloyd Kiff, head biologist on the recovery team that captured the last of the giant vultures in the wild on Easter in 1987 and released the first condor bred in captivity in 1992, agreed with the team’s decision to bring in the three birds.

“It’s part of the process,” he said. “If these birds have bad learned behavior, let’s keep trying until we get a flock of birds out there that don’t develop those habits.”

There are now 71 California condors in captivity at three breeding centers--the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos and a facility in Boise, Ida.--and nine released birds still in the wild, for a total of 80.

“That’s . . . three times more birds than we had when we brought the last one in in 1987,” Kiff said. “That’s wonderful.”

Another condor chick, meanwhile, hatched Monday night at the Los Angeles Zoo, raising the species’ population to 81.

Mike Wallace, curator of conservation and science at the Los Angeles Zoo, said that by bringing the three birds back to the zoo, biologists can release three others into the wild late next fall, along with a new batch of five or more birds already set for release.

The first condor to be killed in the wild died in October, 1992, after drinking anti-freeze.

During the next 13 months, three more birds, all males, died.