Condors Moving Into Populated Areas

Cousins of the California condors that were moved from the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in Ventura County to a more remote site have succumbed to the same attraction as the Sespe birds: they are too curious to stay away from populated areas.

U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists stationed in Ventura said this week that some of the five birds released at Lion Canyon in Santa Barbara County have begun roosting near the small community of New Cuyuma.

Biologists have begun hazing the birds to urge them away from the tiny rural community and back to the vast expanse of open mountains and plains in the Lion Canyon area.

“They’re expanding their range slowly from that (Lion Canyon) site,” service biologist Chris Barr said Thursday. “We’re trying to encourage these birds to cover as much ground as they can to encourage them to forage farther.”

Barr and a team of other Fish and Wildlife Service biologists monitor the existing five vultures daily, leaving carcasses every few nights to feed the young birds. So far, they have ventured as far as 25 miles from where they were released, Barr said.

Four of the first eight condors released into the Sespe had to be captured and moved to Santa Barbara County after four others died in a series of accidents when they clashed with civilized areas.

But biologists also reported more successes with the program to reintroduce the near extinct bird.

The captive breeding program produced the biggest crop of California condor chicks ever since the program began in 1987.

Fifteen of 21 eggs at zoos in Los Angeles and San Diego and a third site in Idaho hatched into healthy young birds during the first four months of the 1994 breeding season, Barr said.

As many of 10 of the chicks will be released this December into the Lion Canyon area where five young birds already are based, Barr said.

Lion Canyon is about 60 miles northwest of the Sespe Condor Sanctuary near Fillmore, where the first two California condors bred in captivity were reintroduced into the wild in 1992.

“We’re really excited to have anywhere between seven and 10 releasable birds this year,” Barr said.

“And we can expect more and more in future years.”

The 15 chicks born this year at the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the World Center for Birds of Prey in Idaho have increased the number of California condors to 90.

In 1987, just 27 of the vultures were left alive from thousands that roamed the skies of North America in past decades.