SOGAMOSO, COLOMBIA — In ancient times, they were revered as messengers of the gods. Later, they proudly soared on the Colombian coat of arms. But at this moment, two young condors just wanted their dinner.
And so it was that peasant "condor keepers" this month placed a cow fetus on a desolate rain-swept cliff here in the Colombian Andes, the weekly ration for Iraka and Ogonta, two females released this year in a repopulation program sponsored by the San Diego Zoo.
Donated by a local slaughterhouse, the carcasses are the ideal diet for the monumental birds -- "good-quality rotting food," as the zoo's Alan Lieberman described it.
The Andean condors are the latest of 70 birds released in Colombia since 1989 after being hatched and raised in 20 U.S. zoos, most often at the San Diego Zoo.
The reintroduction program has helped push Colombia's condor population to about 150 birds, said Orlando Feliciano, a Bogota-based veterinarian who has worked with the San Diego Zoo on the project since its inception. In the mid-1980s, condors in Colombia numbered no more than 15, he said.
For centuries condors were killed by people who either thought, mistakenly, that the carrion birds attacked their livestock or that their feathers or bones had magical or medicinal power.
"They were virtually extinct, as they are today in Venezuela," Feliciano said.
The condors have an impressive survival rate here: About 70% are thought to live through the yearlong reintroduction into the wild before being forced to "make a living on their own," Lieberman said. That success reflects in part the environmental consciousness of towns such as this one, not to mention the residents' realization that the birds can be a tourist boon.
Located about 110 miles northeast of Bogota, the capital, Sogamoso is on the edge of the 100,000-acre Siscunsi Regional Nature Park that the state of Boyaca established expressly for the condors.
When Iraka wandered to a town 30 miles from here this month and perched, disoriented, looking for food, locals knew to call authorities here to capture the bird and take it back to the Siscunsi park.
Eleven local farmers, including Victor Rios, have been named "condor keepers." Outfitted with uniforms, binoculars and hand-held antennas that detect signals emitted from radio transmitters attached to the condors' wings, he monitors the birds' movements as best he can.
