Captive condors released just south of Utah border

[depakid]

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Ariz. » Freedom takes some getting used to. Or at least it did for four California condors hatched and raised in captivity and set loose in the wild Saturday in an event that drew 200 spectators. The endangered birds were set free from a chain-link release pen at the edge of a sandstone escarpment just south of the Utah border in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona.

Once the gate of the pen was opened, the two 2-year-old and two 3-year-old birds looked out on the world wary of launching into the wild blue yonder, even as they were taunted by ravens and encouraged by other condors outside the pen. "Sometimes they fly right out and sometimes it takes days for them to leave the pen," said Eddie Feltes, the project manager for the site and a biologist with the Peregrine Fund.

The private nonprofit group has been working since the 1990s to establish populations of the rare bird that feasts only on carrion in their traditional habitats of California, Mexico and Arizona. The birds also are becoming a familiar sight in skies over southern Utah. On Saturday, about 30 condors converged on the release site to tear apart several cow carcasses the Peregrine Fund had placed around there.

Feltes said the carcasses are placed on rock outcrops regularly to ensure a food supply for the birds, but also to teach the newly released birds how to eat in he wild. He said humans stepped in to save the condor when their numbers became perilously low.

In a 1982 census, Feltes said the wild population had dwindled to just 22 birds, so five years later all the birds were captured and put in breeding programs in Idaho, Oregon and California. The last bird captured, on Easter in 1987, not only helped produce eggs of birds to be released in the wild, but also was released again himself and now soars wild in California.

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