6 Condors Taught to Fear Man Are Freed

Six young California condors were released deep inside the Los Padres National Forest on Wednesday after spending months in a camp designed to teach the birds to avoid humans and high-voltage power poles.

It was the fourth batch of zoo-bred birds released into the wild since the $20-million condor restoration program was launched a decade ago.

The earlier groups were set free in Ventura County’s Sespe Condor Sanctuary, a few miles north of Fillmore. But wildlife biologists decided to move the release site to the remote area of northeastern Santa Barbara County after five of the previously released condors died in encounters with man-made hazards.

Their deaths--four from colliding with power lines and one from drinking antifreeze--prompted wildlife biologists to design an education program to put the fear of man in the birds.

During survival training at the Los Angeles Zoo, the fledglings received mild shocks every time they tried to land on mock power poles erected in their pens. And handlers rushed into the cages to scare the birds every time they caught sight of a human being.

“The problem is that we have no mature adults to show them the ropes,” said Marc Weitzel, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s condor recovery project in Ventura. “It’s like releasing a bunch of wild teen-agers. So we as field biologists have to function as parent condors and keep them out of undesirable areas.”

Shortly after noon Wednesday, four female and two male condors were released in the remote Lion Canyon area of the national forest.

Two of the birds, which have 10-foot wingspans, made short test flights while the others lurked in the bushes near the release site, a Los Angeles Zoo spokeswoman said.