Sedona AZ (February 26, 2014) – “Returning Condors to Arizona – The Ups and Downs of Species Recovery” will be the topic at Keep Sedona Beautiful, Inc.’s Preserving the Wonder™ Speaker Series on Wednesday, March 12th. The Peregrine Fund’s Chris Parish will be the presenter.
The evening will begin at 5:30 pm with complimentary offerings of appetizers donated by El Rincon Restaurante Mexicano and refreshments provided by KSB. The presentation will begin at 5:45 pm.
Prior to reintroduction, the last wild condor in Arizona was sighted just south of the Grand Canyon in 1924. The largest land bird in North America, a condor can weigh up to 26 pounds and have a wingspan up to 9-1/2 feet. Condors were added to the federal Endangered Species List in 1967. Only 22 individuals remained alive in 1982. In 1987, a recovery effort cooperative program was formed by federal, state, and private partners, including The Peregrine Fund, Arizona Game and Fish Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arizona Strip Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management, Grand Canyon and Zion national parks, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and Kaibab and Dixie national forests.
Chris Parish has been serving as the California Condor Reintroduction Project Director with the Peregrine Fund in Arizona since 2000. Having held various wildlife-related positions with Arizona Game and Fish Department since 1996, first working on the Black Footed Ferret Reintroduction Program, he transferred to the Flagstaff Regional Office as Condor Project Coordinator in 1997. For the evening’s presentation he will focus on the successes of the condor reintroduction program in Arizona as well as some challenges faced by this experimental population.
Keep Sedona Beautiful welcomes the community and visitors alike to its monthly Preserving the Wonder™ Speaker Series, which takes place at its historic Pushmataha Center on 360 Brewer Road in Sedona. The Speaker Series, now held the second Wednesday each month from September to June, begins at 5:30 pm with refreshments. The series presents an interesting diversity of programs relevant to the unique environment of our region. Keep Sedona Beautiful, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that, by acting through the stewardship of its members and volunteers, is committed to protecting and sustaining the unique scenic beauty and natural environment of the Greater Sedona Area. For more information about Keep Sedona Beautiful, please call 928.282.4938, or visit http://www.keepsedonabeautiful.org/.