FILLMORE : Condor Chick Moved to Wildlife Refuge

A fourth endangered California condor chick was transferred Tuesday to the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in the hills north of Fillmore, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials said.

The chick, reared at the San Diego Zoo, joins three others transferred last month to the new rearing facility near the site where the first zoo-bred condors were released into the wild in 1992.

Biologists built mini-caves there to house the chicks so they could grow up in as remote a location as possible, far away from the noise of civilization. In zoos, the chicks hear the sound of heavy equipment as well as human voices.

When the chicks, now 3 to 4 months old, are mature enough, they will be moved into the facility’s large flight pen, where they are freer to hop around and will learn lessons in survival.

They will be trained to stay clear of civilization. After four of the birds released earlier were killed on power poles, biologists added a pole with a slight electric charge to the compound to train the birds to avoid that hazard.

All four chicks now at the Hopper Mountain facility were reared by their parents, the first to have that luxury since the last wild condor was captured in 1987 in an effort to rebuild the perilously small population.

The four eventually will be released into the wild, probably into a new site being studied in a remote area of San Luis Obispo County.