6 Young Condors Set Free
Six California condors were released into the Ventura County back country Tuesday amid a growing mood of optimism for their species’ survival.
The young birds rushed out of a box on a remote ridge in the Sespe Wilderness north of Fillmore, spread their massive wings and one by one took short flights around the area. Not experienced enough to soar far, the birds settled into nearby trees.
They joined 51 other condors 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 model themselves after older birds already in the wild.
“It’s a learning process,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 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 condor, the biggest bird in North America, rides warm-air currents like a surfer, soaring across mountain ranges from Southern California to Big Sur as fast as 55 mph and 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 can measure up to 10 feet across.
Four of the six just released birds are 10 month olds. The others are about 2 years old. All six were moved in February to a 10-foot-high 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 homes.
Last week, the birds were taken by helicopter to the release site, a remote perch in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. They then spent a few days in a “hack,” an area made to look like a cave with plenty of room to run and jump. Nonetheless, “they’ll be pretty wobbly for a little bit,” said Melissa Ennis, manager of the Hopper refuge.
One of the older birds was released last year at the site but never grew close to other birds in the wild. He was recaptured after he kept returning to populated areas and industrial sites around Fillmore.
This is 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, prone to perching on power poles, drinking antifreeze or getting lead poisoning by ingesting bullets left in animal carcasses by hunters.
But 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’s during times when they will need to be handled roughly, such as during blood tests and tagging.
“It’s tough love,” said Debora Guillot, a former condor worker who now manages the Bitter Creek reserve in Kern County. “We coddle them, but they don’t know it. When you want them to see you is when you’re doing rough stuff to them.”
California condors have soared over the area since prehistoric times, but the arrival of settlers eventually decimated their numbers through hunting, poisoning and the destruction of the animals they once foraged for.
When only nine condors remained in the wild, they were captured and put in zoos.
Biologists have spent about $25 million in the program to restore the species, 60% of that in private funds. As of April, there were 101 condors in three breeding locations: the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the World Center for Birds of Prey in Idaho.
Biologists say their techniques are paying off.
On Friday, biologists announced that two California condor eggs were discovered in the back country of Santa Barbara County, the first intact eggs found in the wild since scientists began the captive-breeding program 15 years ago. They tout it as another sign that the bird is on its way to recovery.
