[Source: wmicentral.com, AZ Game & Fish Department] – – After years of planning, an endangered jaguar made its way from Sonora, Mexico to Arizona recently. On loan from Mexico, the young male cat will call the Phoenix Zoo home for at least the next year before returning to a zoo in Mexico. The loan was orchestrated by the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the zoo as a way to provide needed medical care to the animal. Illegally captured, the jaguar damaged its canine teeth while in an inadequate enclosure, which precludes it from ever being returned to the wild. The Phoenix Zoo agreed to provide the necessary dental surgery. “The arrival of this jaguar in Arizona is exciting for so many reasons,” said Arizona Game and Fish Department International and Borderlands Program Manager, Francisco Abarca. “Not many people realize that the jaguar is native to the United States, so to work in cooperation with Mexico and the Phoenix Zoo to bring it here provides us with an important chance to learn more about a virtually unstudied population segment of the species.” [Note: to read the full article click here.]
State Parks purchases Camp Verde’s Rockin’ River Ranch
[Source: CVBugle.com, Steve Ayers] — Chalk up another crown jewel for the ever-expanding Verde River Greenway. This week, Arizona State Parks and The Nature Conservancy have announced the purchase of the historic Rockin’ River Ranch, located on the Verde River at the southern edge of the Town of Camp Verde. The $7 million purchase was made with money designated for the specific purpose of acquiring land for State Parks. Funding for acquisition comes from the state’s Heritage Fund, which comes from the state lottery. [Note: to read the full article, click here.]
Creative grant writing may help fund park in Camp Verde
[Source: CVBugle.com, Steve Ayers] — Sometimes it takes brute force to get things done. Sometimes it takes long and arduous hours spent burning the midnight oil. But sometimes all it takes is a little finesse. For months, the Town of Camp Verde has been developing a master plan for its new community park. Brute force and long hours were applied to the process so the plan could be completed in time to apply for a Heritage grant from Arizona State Parks.
The grant, which could be as high as $750,000, would be based on, and go a long way toward, building the park’s many planned amenities, if awarded to the Town. But like all grants, Heritage grants are cumbersome at best, rich in requests for detail and labor intensive for the applicant. [Note: to read the full article, click here.]
Tucson’s second-oldest building undergoes repairs, improvements: La Casa Cordova will reopen to public about December
[Source: Tucson Citizen, Teya Vitu} – – The wood viga and saguaro lath ceilings at the historic La Casa Cordova, 173 N. Meyer Ave., will be visible for the first time in more than 30 years when the second-oldest known building in Tucson reopens to the public, likely in December. La Casa Cordova, built some time before the first Tucson map was drawn in 1862, was closed in June to replace electrical systems, upgrade drainage and make the adobe structure more accessible to the disabled, said Meredith Hayes, spokeswoman for the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block, which manages the house.
Since Labor Day, a 10- to 14-foot-wide brick walkway has been installed in the courtyard so those in wheelchairs will no longer have to roll through dirt to get to the seven rooms in the L-shaped structure. The bricks cover about one-fourth of the dirt courtyard, and a new rock water catch basin fills one corner in the courtyard. Inside, a false ceiling has been removed to reveal the original viga-and-lath ceiling from which track lighting will be suspended as a new electrical and lighting system is installed, said Bob Vint, a downtown architect who specializes in historic preservation. “It was really inadequate,” Vint said. “They did it on a shoestring in the 1970s. They had stuff like extension cords plugged into extension cords.” [Note: to read the full article click here.]