Protect the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund

Special to the Arizona Daily Star by Liz Petterson – August 2, 2018

“Few of us can hope to leave a poem or a work of art to posterity; but working together or apart, we can yet save meadows, marshes, strips of seashore, and stream valleys as a green legacy for the centuries.” — Stewart Udall

Tucson-based Arizona Land and Water Trust partnered with the federal Bureau of Land Management in 2014 to add 356 protected acres to Ironwood Forest National Monument northwest of Tucson.  Home to Ironwood trees reaching over 800 years in age, the property provides steep, rocky slope habitat for desert bighorn sheep, the last endemic population in the Tucson basin. The funds for the property’s protection came from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Created by Congress in 1965, and spearheaded by then Interior Secretary and former Arizona congressman Stewart Udall, Land and Water Conservation Fund was a bipartisan commitment to safeguard natural areas, water resources and our cultural heritage, and to provide recreation opportunities — not with taxpayer dollars, but with a small portion of federal offshore drilling fees.

Now, the Land and Water Conservation Fund is set to expire on Sept. 30. It is critical that the Land and Water Conservation Fund be permanently reauthorized with full, dedicated funding. The fund is authorized to receive up to $900 million annually but over the years, more than $20 billion have been diverted elsewhere. Even so, the fund has protected land in every state over its 53-year history and supported more than 41,000 state and local park projects.

Arizona has received approximately $235 million in fund dollars, protecting places such as the Grand Canyon and Saguaro National Parks, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, Tumacácori National Historical Park and San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

In Pima County alone, the fund has contributed to more than 150 projects, including the City of Tucson’s Reid, Kennedy, Udall, Fort Lowell and Lakeside parks; a dozen school and local park playgrounds, courts, sports fields and swimming pools; Dennis Weaver Park in Oro Valley; Tucson Mountain and Arthur Pack regional parks and The Loop in Pima County; and Catalina State Park.

Arizona’s natural beauty and its recreational opportunities fuel the state’s economy. According to the Arizona Department of Tourism, 43 million people visited Arizona in 2016 and spent $21.2 billion in the state, supporting 201,000 jobs and generating $5.7 billion in wages and salaries and $1.4 billion in state and local tax revenue.

Legislation proposed in Congress to permanently reauthorize and fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, including one introduced by Rep. Raúl Grijalva, continues to have bipartisan support. A March 16 letter to leaders of the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies supporting the fund was signed by Reps. Grijalva, Kyrsten Sinema, Ruben Gallego, Tom O’Halleran and Martha McSally.

Arizona Land and Water Trust has worked with willing landowners and government agencies — BLM, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Arizona Game and Fish, Fort Huachuca and Pima County among others — for 40 years to protect 50,000 acres of wildlife habitat and working ranches and farms in Southern Arizona for future generations.

We were honored to receive the assistance of the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 2014. It makes sense to use a small portion of the fees from the withdrawal of our country’s natural resources to preserve its beautiful and environmentally critical places.

Please contact your representatives and senators. Don’t let the Land and Water Conservation Fund expire.

Desert Museum Pioneer Bill Woodin Leaves Lasting Legacy

Source:  Arizona Daily Star – May 5, 2018

When Bill Woodin was 6, he captured a snake that gave birth to 52 offspring in a single day. At age 11, he was photographed in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson holding a gopher snake longer than he was. At age 12, he charmed the Tucson Rotary Club with a snake talk.

Courtesy Anne Warner

These childhood events symbolized a lifelong love affair with the desert and its wildlife that crystallized in Woodin’s tenure as executive director of the Arizona- Sonora Desert Museum from 1954 to 1971. The museum’s second director, Woodin still has the longest tenure of any director in its 66-year history. He played a key role in building the museum into one of the top 10 zoological museums in the United States and making it an inte! rnational tourist attraction. ‘He was a living legend for all of those involved in the museum,’ said Craig Ivanyi, the museum’s director since 2010. ‘His passion and fingerprints are still there, found throughout this organization. He’s kind of into the fabric of its DNA.’

Woodin died in March at age 92, at the adobe ranch house on a 40-acre parcel bisected by Sabino Creek where he had lived since the early 1950s. His second wife, Beth, a longtime conservation activist and a former Desert Museum trustee, died in January at 71. A memorial service for both will be held May 27 at the museum.

Woodin as director shaped the museum’s future as much as any individual, after its initial vision was laid down by its co-founder and first director William Carr and co-founder and financial benefactor Arthur Pack. Carr resigned after barely two year! s due to ill health after the museum opened on Labor Day 1952. Woodin’s work catapulted the museum into a site whose visitors during his tenure included Eleanor Roosevelt and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

He inherited a facility with annual visitation of about 160,000. The year before he left, attendance had grown to 302,000. Today, the museum draws about 400,000 annual visitors.

Born William Woodin III, his introduction to the Sonoran Desert came at age 4 in 1930, when his parents moved the family to Tucson from his native New York City. His grandfather, also named William Woodin, was President Franklin Roosevelt’s first treasury secretary, instrumental in shaping Roosevelt’s declaration of a bank holiday in 1933 that helped rescue the then-ailing financial system during the peak of the Great Depression.

William III’s father, William Woodin II, and his mother, Carolyn Hyde, had a house built along a dirt Wilmot Road near Speedway, recalled Peter Woodin, a son of the former museum director. It was one of a handful of houses existing that far east in Tucson at the time. A neighboring home belonged to novelist Harold Bell Wright, for whom the Harold Bell Wright Estates neighborhood is now named.

Woodin’s parents were divorced in the 1930s. His mother married nationally known horse breeder Melville Haskell. They raised Woodin on a horse farm near the Rillito River near Swan Road. Haskell was a founder of the American Quarter Horse Association.

Woodin left and returned to Tucson several times, graduating from high school in California, getting a bachelor’s in zoology at the University of Arizona and a master’s in zoology at the University of ! California, Berkeley.

! In pursuit of his master’s degree, in 1950, he identified a kingsnake species in the Huachuca Mountains, where he and his first wife, the former Ann Snow, were camped out. The species was later named after him: lampropeltis pyromelana woodini .

He started as a volunteer for the Desert Museum before it opened, and later became a staff zoologist and deputy director until taking over as director in December 1954. The museum was in a financial crisis, with benefactor Pack having pulled back his support by then. The staff had been cut to five and the museum budget was $60,000. (Its current staff and annual budget are 140 and about $9.5 million, respectively.) Woodin embarked on a period of expansion, and introduced the museum’s first admission charge: 50 cents for adults and a quarter for kids.

Under him, the m! useum built an underground tunnel where visitors could see bat-roost systems, bats nesting in caves, foxes snoozing in dens and snakes nesting, wrote the Saturday Evening Post in a 1962 profile of Woodin titled, ‘People on the way up.’ A museum exhibit called Water Street made an early pitch for saving water in the desert.

Also came exhibits and enclosures for amphibians, black bears, birds, tortoises, otters, coatimundis and other small animals, an aquarium room, artificial habitats using rocks to look like natural habitats, and a vampire bat cave. The museum’s renowned Desert Ark TV program also began under Woodin.

Woodin was always willing to allow his staff to try new things and ideas, encouraging creative people to design exhibits that were copied around the country and around the world, said Peggy Larson, the museum’s archivist.

He was called ‘the most promising young naturalist in the United States’ by Roy Chapman Andrews, a former American Museum of Natural History director, an Asian explorer and an early Desert Museum trustee, the Saturday Evening Post article reported.

But Woodin gave the job up in 1971 on deciding ’17 years was enough,’ said his son Peter. He wanted to concentrate on another lifelong passion, small arms ammunition used by the U.S. military. He spent most of the rest of his life writing a three-volume history on the subject, publishing the final volume in 2015. He also compiled ‘one of the great collections of ammunition in the world,’ said a second son, Hugh Woodin.

He kept the collection at his Woodin Laboratory, built in 1973 and now a 3,000-square-foot underground vault, built of masonry block and reinforced concrete slabs. The laboratory, tracing the ev! olution of small arms ammunition, contains many thousands of specimens, many of which are the only ones of their kind, says a 2010 article about the laboratory in the publication Small Arms Review. The laboratory is a private, nonprofit foundation and educational institute. The family has kept its location private for security reasons.

In an interview in the Small Arms Review, Woodin credited his stepfather for his interest in guns. He said Haskell introduced him to shooting at an early age and ‘instilled in me a real respect for guns and gun safety.

‘To this day, I get the creeps when someone points anything at me, even a finger,’ Woodin told the interviewer.

He also compulsively collected snakes for most of his life, at one time simultaneously owning a green rock rattlesnake and two large kingsnakes. He often prowled aroun! d the desert at night with a flashlight, stick and burlap bag, searchin! g for specimens, and kept bobcats at his home as a hobby. Woodin used to keep his favorite snakes inside sacks in the living room until his wife Ann domesticated him, the Saturday Evening Post article said.

‘It was a terrible sight when the sacks wandered around at night,’ said Ann Woodin, who also forbade her four sons from bringing snakes to the dinner table. Ann, an author, naturalist and community volunteer and activist, died in 2017 at age 90.

Woodin is survived by four sons: Peter, a lawyer and fulltime mediator in New York City; Hugh, a professor of philosophy and mathematics at Harvard University; John, a contractor in Tucson; and Michael, a painter and photographer in Tucson. He also had eight grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Contact reporter Tony Davis at tdavis! @tucson.com or 806-7746

Arizona Game and Fish Department Announce 2018 Heritage Grant Awards

Source:  Arizona Game and Fish Department release – March 19, 2018

On March 7, 2018 at the Arizona Game and Fish Commission meeting held in Douglas, Arizona, the 2018 Heritage Fund Grants were announced.  Heritage Fund money comes from Arizona Lottery ticket sales and was established by voter initiative in 1990. Heritage funding goes toward conservation efforts such as protecting endangered species, educating students and the general public about wildlife and the outdoors, and creating new opportunities for outdoor recreation.

The Heritage Fund Grant Program was established by the Arizona Game and Fish Department in 1992 as part of the overall Heritage Fund program. The grants program initially was developed as a way to promote outreach in order to enhance important partnerships and generate fresh approaches in support of the department’s mission. Since inception, the department has had the opportunity to award more than $16 million through the Heritage Fund grants program and support more than 800 projects throughout the state.

A total of $412,000 was available for the 2018 grant cycle and was awarded through a competitive application process in various categories (Environmental Education, Outdoor Education, Schoolyard Habitat, Urban Wildlife/Habitat, Public Access, and IIAPM).  This year the agency scored 54 Heritage grant proposals. Below are the grant awardees and the grant amount awarded.

Outdoor Education (OE) AZGFD scored seven proposals and the amount available is $16,000. The following five applicants are awarded a 2018 Outdoor Education Heritage Grant:

  • Pendergast Elementary School District, Copper King, for the project titled “Copper King STEAM Goes Overboard.” The award amount is $ 2,500.00.
  • Flagstaff Unified School District, Eva Marshall Magnet Elementary School, for the project titled “Marshall’s 2nd Grade Outdoor Curriculum Experience.” The award amount is $ 2,276.00.
  • Oak Creek Watershed Council, for the project titled “Oak Creek Water Quality Field Days.” The award amount is $ 2,170.00.
  • Gilbert Public Schools, Superstition Springs Elementary School, for the project titled “Second Grade Butterfly Wonderland Field Trip.” The award amount is $ 800.00.
  • Arizona Trail Association, for the project titled “Arizona Trail Wildlife CAM (Conservation and Monitoring).” The award amount is $ 2,500.00.

 Environmental Education (EE) the agency scored a total of nine proposals and the amount available is $16,000. The following four applicants are awarded a 2018 Environmental Education Heritage Grant:

  • Arizona Board of Regents on Behalf of ASU, Tempe and Polytechnic Campuses, for the project titled “Cultivating Life in the Sonoran Desert.” The award amount is $6,825.00.
  • Arizona Wildlife Federation, for the project titled “Audio Guides to the Raymond Wildlife Area and Morman Lake Arizona Watchable Wildlife Experience.” The award amount is $7,665.00.
  • Arizona State Parks, Red Rock State Park, for the project titled “Wildlife Tracking with Technology.” The award amount is $2,250.00.
  • Snowflake Unified School District, Snowflake Jr. High, for the project titled “Technology and Wildlife Collision Reduction.” The award amount is $5,000.00.

Schoolyard Habitat (SCHOOLYARD) scored a total of five proposals and the amount available is $30,000. The following four applicants are awarded a 2018 Schoolyard Heritage Grant:

  • Wickenburg Conservation Foundation, for the project titled “Outdoor Environmental Classroom.” The award amount is $1,715.00.
  • Pine Forest School, for the project titled “Cedar Forest’s Children’s Garden: Schoolyard Wildlife Habitat and Learning Wonderland.” The award amount is $10,000.00.
  • Osborn School District, for the project titled “Desert Tortoise Habitat to Facilitate Outdoor Learning at Solano Elementary School.” The award amount is $1,000.00.
  • Maine Consolidated School District, for the project titled “Northern Arizona Bat Habitat and Sanctuary.” The award amount is $1,329.00.

Urban Wildlife (URBAN) We scored a total of twenty proposals and the amount available is $100,000. The following five applicants are awarded a 2018 URBAN Heritage Grant:

  • Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival, for the project titled “Southwest Wings Birding and Nature Festival: Wildlife Focused Festival.” The award amount is $5,000.00.
  • City of Phoenix, Parks and Recreation, for the project titled “Papago Park All-Access Fishing Dock.” The award amount is $33,000.00.
  • Willow Bend Environmental Education Center, for the project titled “Habitat Restoration and Watchable Wildlife Enhancement at Sawmill/Willow Bend AWWE Site.” The award amount is $38,337.00.
  • Friends of Verde River Greenway, for the project titled “Verde Tour-An Addition to the Arizona Watchable Wildlife Experience Program – Phase 1.” The award amount is $14,166.00.
  • Catalina Foothills School District, for the project titled “Critter Cams for Kids.” The award amount is $4,475.00.

Public Access (ACCESS) We scored a total of four proposals and the amount available is $50,000. The following two applicants are awarded a 2018 ACCESS Heritage Grant:

  • Town of Sahuarita, for the project titled “Sahuarita Lake Public Access for Persons with Disabilities Phase 2.” The award amount is $7,705.00.
  • City of Holbrook, for the project titled “Holbrook’s Public Access to Recreation Area.” The award amount is $42,165.00.

Identification, Inventory, Acquisition, Protection and Management (IIAPM) We scored a total of nine proposals and the amount available is $200,000. The following four applicants are awarded a 2018 IIAPM Heritage Grant:

  • Arizona Board of Regents, University of Arizona, for the project titled “Status, Distribution, Habitat, and Stressors of the Sonoran Talussnail.” The award amount is $40,301.00
  • Phoenix Zoo, for the project titled “Monitoring Fecal Gluticosteroids and Behavior to Assist in Developing a Propagation for Release Program for the Critically Endangered Mt. Graham Red Squirrel.” The award amount is $57,804.00.
  • Arizona Board of Regents, University of Arizona, for the project titled “Soft-release Translocation Techniques to Maximize Fidelity to Release Site in Red Squirrels.” The award amount is $61,895.00.
  • Idaho Department of Fish and Game, for the project titled “Development of YY Male Technology for Eradicating Undesirable Invasive Fish Populations in Arizona.” The award amount is $40,000.00.

Governor Ducey Appoints Leland “Bill” Brake to Arizona Game and Fish Commission

Source:  Press Release – Arizona Game and Fish Department,  January 24, 2018

Gov. Doug Ducey recently announced the appointment of Leland S. “Bill” Brake of Elgin, Arizona, as a member of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission. An avid wildlife enthusiast, Mr. Brake has promoted activities with various wildlife groups in coordination with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to encourage involvement of youth and women in wildlife programs. Mr. Brake has owned and operated ranches in Gila, Navajo, Greenlee and (presently) Santa Cruz counties for 50 years and has served as past president and current board member of the Arizona Cattle Growers’ Association, chairing its Wildlife Committee.

Mr. Brake  has served as an agriculture consultant for DuPont Agriculture, which brings innovative science and solutions to meet the challenges faced by farmers. He has also served as chief operating officer and president for distribution of heavy fuels and asphalt for HollyFrontier, which manufactures and markets a variety of asphalt-related products to private sector customers and government agencies.

Mr. Brake is active in the community. He is a board member and current chair of the Advisory Committee for the University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources (Wildlife and Range Management). He is also a board member and current chair of the Resource Advisory Committee (RAC) for the Bureau of Land Management for Arizona, and is a board member and advisory committee member for the Audubon Society Ranch in Sonoita, Ariz.

He has served as past chairman and board member for the Arizona Rock Products Association, past board member of Associated General Contractors of Arizona, and is a member of the Natural Resource Conservation District (NRCD). He is also a supporter and past member of Safari Club International and is president of the Phoenix Chapter of the University of Arizona Alumni Association. He is a longtime member of the Society of Range Management, Arizona Chapter, and is a lifetime member and past president of the Maricopa Mounted Sheriff Posse. Mr. Brake earned a Bachelor of Science in Range Management, with a minor in Wildlife Management, from the University of Arizona.