WING COMMANDER

beautifully ugly birds still need help.

"I'd like to know another species as well as I know condors," he says. "But there's a lot of work to do."

Condors are scavengers, so for them to survive, another animal has to die - or be killed - before they get to it. In that way, an increased human presence in condor habitats was a good thing for the birds. "We were just another predator that would leave remains of carcasses," Parish says.

But the condor population declined for decades, and by 1982, just 22 remained in the wild. Around that time, scientists implicated poisoning from lead bullets in the deaths of three condors. The remaining birds were captured and put into captive-breeding programs to save the species from extinction. It wasn't until the early 2000s that lead poisoning was confirmed as the No. 1 cause of condor deaths.

Chris Parish is a wildlife biologist for The Peregrine Fund. He's well versed in many species, but he's an expert on California condors. Among other things, the Flagstaff resident oversees the annual release of young condors over the Vermilion Cliffs. And his efforts are paying off. At last count, 74 of the rare birds were living in the wild in Arizona and Utah.

BY NOAH AUSTIN | PHOTOGRAPH BY DAWN KISH "I'd Like to put myself out of work,"

Chris Parish says. It's an arresting statement from a man with obvious passion for his job. But Parish, who's been working with endangered California condors for nearly two decades, knows ultimate success with the species would make his job unnecessary.

With a wingspan of nearly 10 feet and a bald, pinkish head ideal for digging around in a carcass, condors are one of North America's largest and most distinctive birds. They've been on the continent for thousands of years. But by the 1980s, poisoning from lead ammunition had helped push the species to the brink of extinction.

Parish is a wildlife biologist for The Peregrine Fund. Since 1996, the nonprofit has been hatching and raising condor chicks at its Idaho facility, then taking them to the Vermilion Cliffs of Northern Arizona for annual releases into the wild. Parish supervises that effort, and he's also part of a regional push to reduce the use of lead ammo. In partnership with hunters and state agencies, he's making progress, but these Parish, 44, grew up in a small oil and ranching community outside Bakersfield, California, and recalls seeing condors soaring over the San Joaquin Valley. He also hunted and fished, which he says informed his career choice."To be a good hunter or fisherman, you have to ask questions about how those animals behave, so naturally, you start asking questions about what they have to do to survive," he says. "I feel morally obligated to try to understand the problems these species face, the same as I do for our own species."

He attended Northern Arizona University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology with an emphasis on fish and wildlife management (he's back at NAU now, pursuing a Ph.D.). After college, he joined the Arizona Game and Fish Department, where he worked on the reintroduction of black-footed ferrets in the Seligman area. In 1997, he transferred to Game and Fish's Flagstaff office to coordinate the department's work with condors. He's been with The Peregrine Fund since 2000.

Parish remains an avid hunter. That's been invaluable, he says, in the organization's efforts to reduce the use of lead ammunition in the condors' range. It's made him better at communicating the issue's importance to other hunters. But old habits die hard.

"Human beings have difficulty changing long-held traditions," Parish says. "People say, 'Why not ban lead ammunition?' That makes perfect sense in an equation, but changing a law doesn't change behavior."

Conservationists and gun-rights advocates have politicized the idea of a lead-ammo ban, he says, and that's become a major impediment to recovery efforts. He's hoping to show people there's a better way.

"Despite the overwhelming body of scientific knowledge about the dangers of lead, we still have to convince ourselves as a society - especially the shooting public - that this is a real problem and that it's worth solving," he says. "We have to figure out how to market this transition."

So far, the response by hunters is promising: For nearly a decade, more than 80 percent of hunters on the Kaibab Plateau have voluntarily participated in lead-reduction programs, and in 2014, participation hit 91 percent. But condors are still dying of lead poisoning, which tells Parish that more awareness is needed among hunters and other gun users.

“Because there are so few condors, you can know the personality of each bird,” he says. “It makes it hard when you see one needlessly die. That’s the sad part of the story, and it gives you the energy to keep sharing the same story with [people] over and over again, letting them know how they can help.” Condors don’t exactly make Parish’s job easy. In the wild, adult females normally lay only one egg every other year, and they usually don’t produce their first young until age 8. Captive-breeding programs produce more chicks but also pose a new challenge. Condors don’t have an innate fear of people, and a chick that “imprints” upon a human handler will never make it in the wild. So The Peregrine Fund’s workers use puppets that look like adult condors to feed the chicks without directly interacting with them.

When they’re old enough, the condors spend time in a pen in Idaho to learn to live as a flock and develop a social hierarchy. They’re then trucked to another pen at the Vermilion Cliffs, where they can observe wild condors feeding and develop an affinity for them. Finally, in late September, the birds are released as hundreds of people watch from below the cliffs. Within six months, they’ll usually make their first trip to Zion National Park in Utah or the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The birds wear tags and tracking devices so Parish and his team can monitor their movement and health.

The Peregrine Fund’s efforts are paying off. At last count, 74 of the 219 condors now living in the wild were in Arizona and Utah. And last year, a wild-hatched condor in the region produced its own young, the first time that’s happened since reintroduction began. It’s an important step toward creating a self-sustaining population of the birds.

For Parish, his family has gotten involved, too. In 2011, his wife, Ellen, and daughters, Anna and Emma, appeared with Parish in Anna, Emma and the Condors, an award-winning film about the family’s conservation efforts. Anna and Emma are in high school in Flagstaff now, and Parish says they’re “coming to understand that not everyone has a job like Dad has.” But that job is still vital, which is why Parish will keep getting people involved in telling the condors’ story — and envisioning a future in which the condors can tell it themselves.

“You can tell a great story and people can be greatly affected by it, but it’s a continued presence in that process that results in real, lasting change,” he says. “The small successes make us feel great, but until it actually produces a result, we’re still going to be pressing on.” AH