Now, resurrection is coming sooner than anyone dared hope. Next month officials of the California Condor Recovery Program plan to release two captive-born chicks into a mountainous sanctuary 70 miles northwest of L.A. Coincidentally, they were sired by that last male and female brought in from the wild. At first the chicks will live on a netted platform; by January or so, the net will be dropped. Though the birds will be monitored and fed clean carrion (stillborn calves) in the wild, they will have no direct human contact. Condors will once again fly free, just as they have for a million years-minus the last four.

And a hugely controversial four it was. Environmentalists such as Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club lambasted the recovery program, which began in 1980. They argued that, instead of jailing the birds in zoos, do-gooders should save them by protecting their habitat. Biologists countered that the birds were disappearing so fast that, without intervention, there would be none left to occupy the deserted mountains they favored. “Some people felt the birds should ‘die with dignity’,” recalls Condor Recovery Team leader Lloyd Kiff. “Our hope was to save a species.” Other conservationists criticized the practice of removing eggs from a female’s nest to induce her to lay another clutch. That strategy helped boost the captive population to 27 by 1987, saving the primeval beast from the dodo’s fate.

Of 52 condors in captivity, 26 chicks were born and all but one has survived. That success pushed up the planned release by two years, allowing the California condor to join the lucky species that, driven toward extinction, have been bred in captivity and returned to the wild:

Golden lion tamarins-long-haired monkeys-flourished in Brazil’s coastal forest until deforestation and i legal captures plunged the population the 1960s. Since 1983, 90 monkeys, bred mostly in American zoos, have been released into a 16,000-acre reserve in Brazil. Twenty of the returnees are self-sufficient enough to hunt for their own food. One third are mating with wild monkeys.

Arabian oryx faced an even tougher climb back: by 1972, they existed only in zoos. In 1980, 18 of the captives were released in Oman. Biologists had to teach them survival skills-how to move toward dark clouds and rainfall in order to find food-but now 120 of them are running around the desert.

Kenya’s black rhinos, killed for their horns, numbered fewer than 400 in 1986. The survivors were then hauled into sanctuaries for protection and to breed, and ultimately transferred to Tsavo National Park. Two have already been moved. If they survive, 10 will go in the next two years, with the hope of restoring the population to 700 by 1999.

Reintroduction presupposes a wild to return to safely. Some experts fear that good ole boys in ATVs won’t be able to keep their rifle sights off the California condors. (Shooting a condor is a federal crime.) Inbreeding is also a threat. Man can do almost everything for the tough old bird but guarantee it a place in the modern age.