1 of Last 2 Known Wild Condors Is Caught for Breeding Program

Biologists have captured one of two known remaining California condors in the wild and brought it to the San Diego Wild Animal Park to join a captive-breeding program for the highly endangered species.

The bird, known both as AC-5 and as the Sequoia Male, was caught in a net on private land while feeding in the Tehachapi Mountains in southern Kern County around sunset Friday, said Joe Dowhan, an official with the Condor Research Center of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The bird was brought by airplane to the park, where veterinarians found it to be in good physical condition, Dowhan said Saturday. The 19 1/2-pound bird was placed in protective quarantine before being added to the 12 condors already in the breeding program. There are 13 condors in a similar program at the Los Angeles Zoo.

AC-5 is particularly valuable to breeding healthy numbers of condors because his genetic material is under-represented among the 27 living condors, Dowhan said. The bird is known to have sired only one offspring, a 2 1/2-year-old male named Sequoia, which was taken as a chick from a cliff-side nest in October, 1984. His female mate mysteriously disappeared later that winter, along with five others, and was never found.

Biologists hope to capture the remaining condor by spring. If sufficient numbers are bred at the two zoos, releases back into protected natural areas will begin between 1990 and 1992, they say. In December, the wildlife service bought the 11,500-acre Hudson Ranch in southern Kern County as a future condor refuge, known as the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge.