CONDORS TAKING TO CLIFFS; 4 NEW ARRIVALS SET TO JOIN 11 RELEASED BIRDS.

Byline: Jerry Nachtigal Associated Press 

The skies over northern Arizona are positively crowded with California condors these days, compared to a century ago when they were all but extinct in the state.

Four of the huge, rare birds were transported Wednesday from the Los Angeles Zoo to pens perched on the soaring Vermilion Cliffs north of the Grand Canyon. The 4-month-old birds tentatively will be released Nov. 20.

The baldheaded, ungainly carrion eaters are expected to join up with 11 condors released in the past year at the same red sandstone cliffs. The birds have surprised wildlife officials and delighted tourists by soaring 190 miles to the northeast and also riding thermals above the Grand Canyon.

``I don't think we could hope for more,'' said Amy Nicholas, one of four biologists who track the birds for the Peregrine Fund, an Idaho-based conservation group.

A total of 15 young condors raised in captivity have been set free at the Vermilion cliffs since December in hopes of establishing the only wild condor population outside of California.

Two of the birds have died - one in a fight with a golden eagle and another in a collision with a power line - and a third is missing and presumed dead. A fourth condor was captured and placed in a zoo after showing too much fondness for human handouts of road-killed rabbits.

The condors arrived at the Page airport in four portable dog carriers covered with cloth to keep the birds from glimpsing humans. They are raised in captivity with only a minimum of human contact to keep them from imprinting on humans.

``So far we've been real encouraged about how little contact our wild birds have had with humans,'' said Mark Vekasey, a field biologist for the Peregrine Fund.

The condors were whisked to the Vermilion Cliffs west of Page in a Salt River Project helicopter and placed in a large pen littered with a welcoming feast of rat carcasses. In a couple days, they'll be allowed to venture into a fenced area where they can test their wings and glimpse the same craggy sandstone cliffs where their ancestors once fed on carcasses of woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.

Releasing the birds at the 1,000-foot cliffs in the national forest is part of a program begun in the 1980s to reintroduce the California condor to its natural home in the Southwest. California condors are North America's largest and rarest birds.

The condor program marks the first time the birds have flown in Arizona since 1924. Officials hope to establish a population of 150 condors in Arizona, where they believe the remoteness of the Vermilion Cliffs area will be more hospitable to the birds than crowded California.

Humans shot, poached and poisoned California condors until only nine birds remained in the wild in 1985. The last few remaining free condors were rounded up and put into a captive breeding program.

Only 26 California condors exist in the wild - 15 released at Hopper Mountain Wildlife Refuge in Southern California and the other 11 at the Vermilion Cliffs along the Arizona-Utah border.

In 1987, when the last condor was taken into captivity in California, there were only 27 in existence. Now there are 130.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1) Biologists from the Peregrine Fund carry a young California condor down the slopes of the Vermilion Cliffs toward a holding pen.

(2) A young condor from the L.A. Zoo looks out of his holding cage.

Associated Press