Released Condors’ Forays Near Town Worry Biologists

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 condors 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 rural town 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,” wildlife 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 five condors daily, leaving carcasses every few nights to feed the young birds. So far, the huge vultures 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 had encounters with civilization.

But biologists also reported more successes with the program to reintroduce the near-extinct birds. The captive breeding program produced the biggest crop of California condor chicks 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.