STATE CONDORS SET TO RETURN TO SKIES OF MONTEREY AREA.

Byline: Associated Press

For the first time in decades, California condors will fly over Monterey County later this year if a release goes as planned.

Four young condors will be freed in the Ventana Wilderness in December, to be fed and tracked and cared for by the Ventana Wilderness Sanctuary, the first nonprofit organization in California to release condors.

The last time a pair of condors bred in Monterey County was 1905, though condors from Southern California continued to fly over the Central Coast into the 1970s.

Sal Lucido, president and co-founder of the Ventana Wilderness Sanctuary, said the first written account of condors on the Central Coast is from 1602, when European explorers spotted the huge birds feeding on a whale carcass in Monterey Bay.

``We're in for a real treat,'' Lucido said. ``Once you've seen a California condor, you never forget it.''

With a wing span of nearly 10 feet, he said they are ``a gentle giant. I consider them the earth's `E.T.' as far as curiosity and intelligence.''

The last wild California condor was trapped Easter Sunday in 1987, said David Clendenen, senior biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's California Condor Recovery Program. At the time the total number of animals in the world amounted to only 27.

``There are 17 in the wild now,'' he said. ``That's more than in the wild since the early 1980s.'' An additional 121 are in captivity.

``Very possibly it will be exponential from here on out,'' Clendenen said. ``The breeding population just keeps growing and growing.''

Of the 14 chicks expected to be released this year, six are to go to the Vermilion Cliffs area of northern Arizona, near Grand Canyon, four to Ventana and another four are to be released in southern California.