4 Condors to Be Released Near Big Sur

Continuing a decade-long effort to save the nation’s largest and rarest bird from extinction, wildlife preservationists are scheduled to release four more California condor chicks Monday, returning the species to the Central Coast mountains near Big Sur for the first time in 30 years.

Working in concert with the Ventura-based federal program to save the majestic bird, the nonprofit Ventana Wilderness Sanctuary will release three male condors and one female into Los Padres National Forest in southern Monterey County. Three chicks were hatched at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and one at the Los Angeles Zoo.

The condor release will be the third since November and the ninth since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began to return California condors to the wild in 1992.

Of the 45 condors released over the last five years--first in Ventura County and now in Santa Barbara County, northern Arizona and the Central Coast--six have died and 11 have been returned to captivity because they could not adapt to life in the wild, federal program coordinator Robert Mesta said.

“I think that’s extremely successful, when you consider programs where endangered species have been reintroduced and they have suffered large numbers of [deaths],” he said.

The program is especially promising now, he said, because private, nonprofit agencies have taken responsibility for overseeing the six chicks released in Arizona in December and the four on the Central Coast on Monday.

The annual cost to the Ventana Wilderness group will probably run $100,000 a year, Mesta said.

The entire program has cost $20 million over the last decade, and it has an annual budget of $500,000.

Unlike disputes surrounding the release in Arizona, three public hearings in Monterey County prompted attendance by only about half a dozen residents and brought no complaints, Mesta said.

In Arizona, property owners feared that the presence of an endangered species could limit use of privately held lands. But the rugged terrain into which this set of chicks will be released is 26 miles south of Monterey, surrounded by public lands and far from any sizable community, Mesta said.

“It poses no threat whatsoever,” Mesta said. “If fact, it will enhance the tourist industry, if it does anything.”

There are 120 living California condors, including 18 in the back country of Los Padres National Forest near Ventura County.