6 Condors Released Into the Wild

Six California condors were released into the Ventura County back country Tuesday amid growing optimism about their species’ survival.

The birds bounded from a box on a remote ridge in the Sespe Wilderness north of Fillmore, flexed their massive wings and one by one took short flights around the area. Not quite experienced enough to soar very far, the young birds settled into nearby trees.

They join 51 birds in the wild, including 10 that were released earlier in Southern California.

The release buoyed scientists already excited by the discovery last week of the first intact condor eggs found in the wild since a program to save the birds began.

Biologists hope that the newly released birds, which have spent most of their lives in the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos where they were born, will mimic older birds already in the wild.

“It’s a learning process,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Greg Austin. “When we had no free-flying birds, it could take three months for them to learn to fly. But we expect these to be flying all over the place in a month.”

The California condors, the biggest birds in North America, ride warm-air currents like surfers, soaring across mountain ranges from Southern California to Big Sur as fast as 55 mph and traveling as far as 300 miles a day.

“They look ungainly, but boy, when they fly, it’s incredible the way they use the air currents,” said Janet Hamber, condor biologist at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. “You could watch them glide for an hour and a half” without flapping their wings, which measure up to 10 feet across.

Four of the six newly released birds are 10 months old; the others are about 2 years old. All six were born in zoos, and moved in February to a pen at the Hopper Mountain National Refuge north of Fillmore, where they had an opportunity to flap their wings and see the environs that would soon become their home.

Last week, the birds were taken by helicopter to the release site, a remote perch in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. They had spent the last few days in a so-called hack, made to look like a cave, with room to run and jump.

Still, “they’ll be pretty wobbly for a little bit,” said Melissa Ennis, manager of the refuge.

It was the second release of birds in Ventura County since 1992, when the program was temporarily suspended after five birds were electrocuted by power lines. Condors are by nature curious, and prone to perching on power poles. Some have also suffered lead poisoning after ingesting bullets left in animal carcasses by hunters.

A program to scare them away from power poles is working, said Mike Wallace, wildlife scientist at the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species in San Diego. Only two condors have been lost to power poles since 1992, he said.

“It’s pretty much solved,” he said. “Lead poisoning [from bullets] is our big problem now.”

Biologists also hope they have taught the condors to fear humans. They never see the people who raised them in zoos, and when they do come into contact with humans it is during times when they need to be handled roughly, such as during blood tests and tagging.