In Memoriam: James Harris Enderson, 1936–2017

Jim Enderson, among the original members at the founding of The Raptor Research Foundation, died on 10 January 2017 in Colorado Springs, CO, following a long battle with complication of the lungs.Jim will be remembered primarily for his groundbreaking work with the Peregrine Falcon, especially in Colorado, but also throughout the western United States, as a part of the breeding programs and efforts to reestablish the species following its decline over most of United States and southern Canada.Those were scary times for peregrine enthusiasts.Jim was born on 3 November, 1936, in Sioux City, IA.His life up through early graduate school was spent in the Midwest.His initial contact with raptors as a young boy involved his capturing and keeping in captivity a fledgling American Kestrel.He received his university training at the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he obtained both a B.S. degree and later a M.S. degree in zoology in 1959.He then moved west to the University of Wyoming, Laramie, where he received a Ph.D. while doing research on the ecology of the Prairie Falcon in the central Rocky Mountain region.After that, he joined the faculty at the Colorado College in 1962 and became a full professor in 1975, serving as chair of the biology department for several years, and finally retiring as an emeritus professor in 2001.During his career, he taught a variety of courses from anatomy and physiology to ecology to the flora of Colorado.He was an active member of the falconry community and was one of the founding members in 1962 of the North American Falconer's Association.Jim was an active publisher in the professional peer-reviewed scientific literature.Most of his publications, nearly 70 in all, concerned the Peregrine Falcon in some fashion, with a handful of publications on the Prairie Falcon and other raptors.Jim had numerous chapters in books and produced many reports on peregrines for government agencies.He served on two government Peregrine Falcon recovery teams; the first team assignment covered the Rocky Mountain region and the second team assignment covered the entire western half of the United States.Jim was appointed leader of that second team, but because of the plethora of problems it addressed, the process was lengthy and a final draft was never published.He doggedly pursued the comeback of the peregrine in Colorado on an annual basis, eyrie by eyrie.He eagerly awaited the spring arrival of peregrines back at their nest cliffs and spent the breeding season constantly in the field, observing and tallying the results.Aside from Colorado, however, he spent parts of many field seasons in Alaska, Northwest Territories (Canada), Greenland, Zimbabwe, and took a sabbatical in Scotland to work on peregrines there.In the 1990s, he had students from the college work with him on migrant peregrines in Mexico and the Texas Gulf Coast.Then, again with students, he surveyed and monitored the comeback of peregrines in many of the national parks in the Colorado Plateau region.One of his latest papers detailed the nesting performance of the recovered falcon populations in the western states of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming.In 2004, he coauthored a lengthy and important Technical Publication for the Colorado Division of Wildlife chronicling peregrine biology and management in Colorado between 1973-2001.We would call that a truly long-term study.Jim was one of the 63 participants invited to the 1965 conference on Peregrine Falcons and their decline organized by Joseph Hickey and held in Madison, Wisconsin.Some of the Europeans attending the

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