Nature and Wildlife Discovery Center
Colorado
For twelve years, a footrace here started not with a gun but with a live bird of prey let loose into the canyon.
A footrace here used to begin with a bird. Every December, runners gathered in Rock Canyon for the Raptor Resolution Run, five miles of trail along the Arkansas River, and the event opened with a rehabilitated raptor being released back into the wild. The last one was held in January of twenty twenty-four, the twelfth and final running, with a hundred and twenty-eight people on the course. Harrison Walter finished first among the men in thirty-one minutes and thirty-nine seconds. Jessy Narimanov led the women in thirty-three twenty-five. The bird part was not decoration. The Raptor Center sits beside the river here, and it has been taking in injured and orphaned birds of prey from southeastern Colorado since nineteen eighty-one. Eagles, hawks, owls, falcons, vultures. Hundreds every year, admitted, patched up, and let go. The ones that cannot be released live at the Pueblo Zoo instead.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
which kicks off with the release of a live raptor each December
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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