A Breeding Project First: Condor Hatches in Wild

A California condor chick hatched in the wild Friday, the first since a captive breeding program to save the species began 15 years ago.

The chick’s natural parents are captive condors at the Los Angeles Zoo, but scientists hope two of the condors nesting in Los Padres National Forest will learn how to raise the chick as their own.

Scientists took the egg from the zoo and put it in the nest in the forest, where earlier they had planted an artificial egg.

Scientists had already removed a wild egg from the nest and had it hatched in the zoo, after condors that had been released in the wild had trouble incubating it. That was the first intact egg found in the wild since the program began.