5 Condors Released Into Wild at Big Sur

Interior Secretary Gale Norton stood on a cliff 3,900 feet above the Pacific, a cell phone pressed to her ear, and issued an order that she said brought back memories of her early years as an Interior Department attorney.

“I think it’s time for freedom,” she said, and the condor keepers in the canyons below opened the gate that separated five captive-bred birds from life in the wilderness. As dozens of officials watched on video screens from the cliff above, the birds emerged one by one from their pen to take flight over the Big Sur region, one of America’s most spectacular panoramas of sea and sky.

Norton watched from above, peering through a high-powered telescope lens, surrounded by high-ranking state and federal officials and bird biologists.

It was the first official visit Norton has paid to California since her confirmation as interior secretary, and she hiked for more than a mile up a mountain trail amid a bevy of journalists and representatives of various wildlife organizations.

Looking relaxed, Norton was in jeans and a blue and yellow parka, binoculars around her neck, her image belying the one invoked by environmentalists of a rigidly pro-business bureaucrat intent on disassembling the Endangered Species Act.

One of the nation’s most powerful conservation laws, the act has come under intense attack from conservative politicians and landowners, who say it can cripple growth and curb property rights.

Norton said Thursday that she specifically asked to attend the latest condor release, which featured one of the nation’s most imperiled creatures, now back in the wild only as a result of near-Herculean efforts to save the species.

“It’s like seeing the end of the story,” said Norton, recalling the drama she encountered in the mid-1980s as an associate solicitor at the Interior Department. At the time, the condor population was in free-fall, with only 22 in the wild in 1982.

“It became something of a soap opera,” she told an audience of 150 at the cliff-top event. “This one was exhibiting breeding behavior. . . . This one hadn’t been seen in a while, and this one was exhibiting problems.”

The office where Norton worked was responsible in court for defending the decision of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to capture all remaining condors and bring them into a captive breeding program. Some argued at the time that the bird should die in the wild with dignity, but the government disagreed.

“Hand in hand with many partners, we’re pulling this majestic bird back from the brink of extinction,” Norton told the crowd. She issued a stirring endorsement of the kinds of cooperative partnerships that she said have helped save the condor from what appeared to be certain extinction. Today, after an aggressive and costly captive breeding program, 29 condors are living in the wild in California and 24 more are in Arizona.

The San Diego Wild Animal Park raised three of the condors released this week and the Los Angeles Zoo raised the other two. They bring to 19 the number of condors in the Ventana Wilderness.

Norton emphasized the fact that private breeding facilities helped spearhead the condor effort and that a nonprofit conservation group, the Ventana Wilderness Society, has championed reintroduction efforts on the Central Coast.

In remarks to reporters after the ceremony, she stressed the importance of public-private partnerships in aiding endangered plants and animals. Too often, government efforts have proved counterproductive, she said. She talked about the potential for a landowner incentive program to help those who find endangered species on their property.

“We’ll try to work cooperatively with landowners,” she said. She also said the Bush administration has not yet made a decision on whether to seek amendments to the Endangered Species Act.