California Condors

A second California condor chick has hatched in Ventura County's back country, further encouraging wildlife officials about the endangered bird's recovery. The egg hatched Saturday in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in Los Padres National Forest north of Fillmore. "The chick's parents, a 5-year-old female and an 8-year-old male, were raised in zoos, then released into the wild as 1-year-olds.

A project to build a community of 60,000 residents along the last wild river in Southern California has sparked a feud between two federal agencies over plans to alter areas crucial to California condors and convert nearly 20 miles of waterways into concrete drains and levees. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency questions whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is set to permit the Newhall Ranch construction 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, has adequately considered the threat of flooding caused by building in the flood plain of the Santa Clara River or its effects on water quality, tributary streams, Native American burial sites and an array of rare and endangered plants and animals.

Three California condors will be set free Thursday to soar above Pinnacles National Monument, joining the ranks of several others released into the wild as part of a 16-year national program that aims to save North America's largest birds. "The goal is to establish an additional 10 to 20 birds at Pinnacles within the next couple of years," said Curt Mykut, spokesman for the Ventana Wilderness Society, the Carmel-based nonprofit group that is helping coordinate the release.

There are two shrunken heads from Ecuador and a shawl so intricately embroidered with miniature scenes, it cost its Orange County buyer 500 heifers in the 1800s. An Egyptian mummy mask has a hauntingly realistic portrait of its owner drawn on the inside. The 74-year-old Bowers Museum in Santa Ana is an eclectic sort of museum. Once devoted to Orange County history, in more recent years its displays have included China's terra cotta soldiers and Ansel Adams photographs. But the exhibit that opened earlier this month has to be the most mixed grouping yet, a kaleidoscope of oddities whose only commonality is that they were found by curators ransacking the museum's storage shelves.

In a momentous step toward the revival of an endangered species, two zoo-bred California condors were airlifted Thursday into the rugged wilderness of Ventura County to reclaim their prehistoric heritage. At 8:46 a.m., the first of two helicopters carrying the California condors lifted off from the parking lot at the Los Angeles Zoo, carrying Xewe (pronounced Ga-Wee), a 5-month-old female hatched at the zoo.

A federal grand jury has indicted two Long Beach men for allegedly attempting to shoot one of the endangered California condors released into Los Padres National Forest as part of a $15-million project to save the birds from extinction. Cesario Quinteros Campos, 32, was arrested Wednesday at his home by U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents. He and Ricardo Contreras Tirado, 23, were charged Tuesday with firing a .

The endangered California condor that died last month fell victim to the same syrupy sweet substance that has poisoned many a household pet--a puddle of antifreeze probably leaked from a car radiator. The bird called Chocuyens (Cho-KOO-yenz) died of kidney failure after it drank ethylene glycol, a toxic fluid used in antifreeze, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials said.

A California condor chick hatched Tuesday at the Los Angeles Zoo, bringing the total of the endangered birds to 73. The chick, whose sex will be determined in three months by chromosome analysis, was the offspring of Topa Topa, captured in the wild in 1967, and his mate, Malibu. The chick had minced mouse for its first meal. Topa Topa was one of 14 California condors captured in the wild to launch a captive breeding program to save the species. He was the last of the 14 to reproduce.

A California condor early today laid the second egg of the year for a breeding program trying to bring the giant vultures back from the brink of extinction, Los Angeles Zoo officials said. The egg was spotted at 7:50 a.m. by keepers watching a nesting box by closed-circuit television. The egg was removed within 10 minutes and placed in an incubator, where its fertility will be determined in five to seven days. Hatching is due in late March. The first egg of the season was produced Jan.

A California condor Thursday laid the first egg ever produced in captivity by a pair of the endangered birds, the San Diego Wild Animal Park said. If the egg hatches at the end of its two-month incubation, it will be the first California condor ever conceived in captivity and give a big boost to efforts to save the species, officials said. Only 27 of the birds exist, all in captivity, park spokesman Tom Hanscom said.

I'd never accuse the good rangers at Pinnacles National Monument of pulling a bait-and-switch, but they did have to recently perform some serious family counseling in order to keep a condor couple's maternity plans on track. That the couple, Condor 317, the female, and Condor 318, the male, are the first nesting condors in the park in 100 years was inspiration enough for some ranger sleight-of-hand, but the fact that there are fewer than 350 California condors in the world gave special urgency to ensuring a productive roost.

When Condors 317 and 318 got together, nobody knew their affair would make history. But scientists believe that this week, for the first time in more than a century, a California condor was hatched in Pinnacles National Monument, a wilderness that used to be home to the magnificent raptor. Mother and chick are doing fine, said Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society, a group that collaborates on condor programs with the National Park Service. Once common in California, condors ran head-on into housing developments and hunters, dying from ingesting lead, antifreeze and other toxic substances.

The shotgun shooting of two California condors has prompted a large reward -- as well as a spat between federal wildlife investigators and a private detective hired by an environmental group. A private detective from Culver City, Bruce Robertson, should "stay out of my way," said Dan Crum, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's resident agent for Northern California and lead investigator into the recent shootings in Monterey County, near Big Sur.

A California condor captured on the Central Coast because it appeared to be sick was not only suffering from lead poisoning but also had been shot, animal experts said Friday. Unable to eat on its own, the condor was under intensive care at the L.A. Zoo, and its prognosis was guarded, birds curator Susie Kasielke said. X-rays taken at the zoo showed shotgun pellets embedded in its flesh, Kasielke said. Those wounds had healed over, and it could not be determined when they occurred.

He was found dazed in a mountain bush in 1967, hanging upside down with an injured wing and smelling like rotten fish -- a rare male California condor, a fledgling member of a nearly extinct species. He was a wreck, and the ornithologists who found him in a canyon north of Ojai speculated that he was also emotionally troubled.

Conservationists who have battled for years to eliminate lead ammunition, which they call the biggest threat to endangered California condors, are now setting their sights on Utah. Successful programs to limit the use of lead ammunition in Arizona and California have reduced the number of the giant vultures poisoned from eating bullets in carcasses of animals shot by hunters. But as the resurgent condors expand their range into nearby Utah, wildlife officials know they must broaden their focus.

Biologists captured the last California condor in the wild at the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge on Sunday, and for the first time in 15,000 years, the foothills of Southern California are absent a familiar sight. Trapping of that condor--commonly known as "The Los Angeles County bird" for his cliff-side birthplace near Saugus seven years ago--leaves not one of his species in the wild, where scientists said they have lived since the early Pleistocene Era.

The California condor, rescued from extinction in an elaborate and expensive recovery effort, has become tantamount to a zoo animal in the wild and can't survive on its own without a ban on lead ammunition across its vast Western ranges, a scientific study has concluded. The majestic scavengers, bred in captivity and released to nature in recent decades, require "constant and costly human assistance," a blue-ribbon panel of the American Ornithologists' Union reported this week.

The state Fish and Game Commission has expanded its ban on the use of lead ammunition in hunting grounds that also are home to California condors. Earlier this year, the state Legislature outlawed most lead ammunition in hunting rifles, saying that rare California condors suffer lead poisoning when they eat animal carcasses left behind by hunters. Friday's 3-1 vote by game commissioners goes further, however, and prohibits the use of lead in firearms that are .22 caliber or smaller.