3 Condors Taken to Release Site

SAN DIEGO — As part of a plan to test the survivability of condors in the wild, a second group of Andean condors was taken to a planned release site in Ventura County on Thursday night, the head of the California condor recovery program said Friday.

“We had a very successful transfer of birds last night,” said Joseph J. Dowhan, who leads the program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “All three birds are doing very well.” The operation went more smoothly than the first transfer of birds in August, during which one of the condors died, Dowhan said.

The Andean condor project is a prototype for testing release techniques that biologists hope to use with zoo-bred California condors in the 1990s. All 28 California condors known to be in existence are in the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos, as part of a federal project to try to reestablish them in the wild.