Environmental Education Archives - Page 12 of 17

Welcome New Board Member – Walter W. (Bill) Meek

December 29, 2017 by azheritage2

Source: Arizona Heritage Alliance December 29, 2017 Newsletter

In early December 2017, the Arizona Heritage Alliance elected Walter W. (Bill) Meek to serve a three year term on the Alliance’s Board of Directors. Welcome Bill and thank you for your support of the Alliance’s mission and goals.

Walter W. (Bill) Meek, a 50-year resident of Arizona, is past president of the Arizona State Parks Foundation, a private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving conditions at State Parks. Bill retired in 2007 after 14 years as the founding president and CEO of the 7,000-member Arizona Utility Investors Association, now known as the Arizona Investment Council. Before that, Bill spent 15 years running marketing communications companies in Phoenix, San Diego, and Tucson and another 15 years working as a newspaper reporter and editor, including ten years at The Arizona Republic.

Letter of Support on Behalf of The Nature Conservancy

November 29, 2017 by azheritage2

Source: Arizona Heritage Alliance Board of Directors’ Letter of Support Sent to Arizona Game and Fish Department for the Verde River-West Clear Creek Conservation Area – November 23, 2017

Ty Gray, Director
Arizona Game and Fish Department
5000 W. Carefree Highway
Phoenix, AZ 85086-5000

Dear Director Gray:

On behalf of the Arizona Heritage Alliance Board of Directors, I am writing to voice our strong support for the Verde River – West Clear Creek Conservation Area as proposed by The Nature Conservancy in Arizona. As you know, the mission of the Alliance is to preserve and enhance Arizona’s historic, cultural, and natural heritage. The proposed partnership between your agency and the Nature Conservancy offers a unique opportunity for protecting and enhancing a significant swath of water resources, streamside forests, and wildlife habitat in the Lower Verde Valley.

We believe It is important to protect both Park Central Farm and Shield Ranch with conservation easements in order to preserve connectivity of habitat along the Verde River corridor for three miles and the confluence of the river with West Clear Creek. Protecting only one property will not achieve unified protection along both sides of the river and the West Clear Creek confluence.

Conservation easement acquisitions are an effective tool because they provide direct habitat protection and protect recreational opportunities while significantly reducing O&M costs. We also believe the use of Arizona Game and Fish Heritage Funds to facilitate this initiative is just the type of project the citizens of Arizona envisioned when voting to approve the Arizona Heritage Fund 27 years ago.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter and for your public service.

Sincerely yours,
Elizabeth T. Woodin
President

Travois: I Encourage Scottsdale City Council to vote for the Desert EDGE

November 9, 2017 by azheritage2

Source: Editorial by Ken Travous; Scottsdaleindependent.com – November 7, 2017

I have been following the Desert Discovery Center saga for the past few years, and I don’t envy the situation now before the Scottsdale City Council. In one respect, I’ve been there myself. I was the director of Arizona State Parks during the purchase, study, planning, development, opening, and, for the first 10 years, operation of Kartchner Caverns State Park.

During the planning and development stages there were voices of difference on what should and, as importantly, what should not be done with the resource. A resource that was quickly designated as one of the top 10 caves in the world from a mineral diversity standpoint, not to mention that it was a “living cave,” a dripping wet cave just below the Arizona desert.All of the voices were valid. All envisioned a future for Kartchner Caverns that represented what they wanted Kartchner to be. All, indeed, wanted only what they thought best — from their standpoint. So it is with the Desert Discovery Center, now called Desert EDGE.

Various interests have expressed their views, and now Scottsdale City Council must decide the best use of the resource. The key question they must answer, I believe, is what positions the city into the future. Shall the Preserve remain as it is today, or should it become an environmental education showcase? I encourage them to vote for the Desert EDGE.

It is their decision. It is what we elected them to do and they have shown that they have taken the time to listen to the voices. To place the decision to a public vote skews the field to those who will only be satisfied with capitulation. Moreover, these are not “zero sum” circumstances. Those who want only to have their place to hike will still have it.

The discoverers of Kartchner, Randy Tufts and Gary Tennen, along with the Kartchner family realized they had something much more than just a pretty hole in the ground to entertain future visitors. They had a place to teach and inspire future decision makers. A place for visitors to understand their responsibility to study and unlock the hidden messages of their surroundings

Living on the desert edge requires us to prepare for the future. Desert EDGE is the perfect place to do just that. Frankly, you can’t do that without slowing the visitor down and engaging them in the contemplation a visitor center affords.Those of us who were primarily engaged in the development of Kartchner have witnessed the partnerships with The National Science Foundation, NASA, the U of A and a host of other scientific interests in furtherance of those goals.

We remain enthralled by the studies of microbes and their role in the formation of stalactites, the record of flora and fauna changes over eons, and the hydrological record contained there and their implications into the future.

We have not regretted our choices. Nor will the city council.

Editor’s note: Mr. Travous was the Arizona State Parks director for seven governors, both Democrat and Republican for the years 1986 through 1999. He is retired and lives in Scottsdale.

Environmental Study Ranks Arizona Second Lowest Among Western States

October 20, 2017 by azheritage2

Source: Joshua Bowling, The Republic/azcentral.com, October 18, 2017

It found Arizona’s access to public lands and responsible energy development need improvement.

(Photo: Mark Henle/The Republic)

Arizona ranked second-lowest among eight Western states in a scorecard measuring the use and management of public lands, an advocacy group said Tuesday. The scorecard, produced and released by the non-profit Center for Western Priorities, examined how Western states regulated public lands, recreation, wildlife conservation and energy development.

Jennifer Rokala, the center’s executive director, said reports like this one are increasingly important in the national political climate. “Currently much attention is focused on the national level at what the Trump administration will do to roll back protections of public lands,” she said during a media conference call Tuesday. “Truly, there’s a different story to be told at the state level.”

Rokala said “no one state does everything correctly,” but she hopes the scorecard will provide a sort of roadmap so state officials can see what policies legislators in nearby states are implementing and learn from them.

Holly Fretwell, a research fellow at the Property and Environmental Research Center in Montana, said these sorts of specific reports can help illustrate what specific states need, rather than “one-size-fits-all” national studies. Fretwell said public land issues are often difficult issues for states that have to juggle state land use with federal land use. “We tend to have this conflict,” she said. “The competing demands on resources and how to use resources because they’re on the federal level.”

Average marks for recreation

Lyman Lake State Park features three hiking trails. (Photo: Arizona State Parks)

Although Arizona outperformed Idaho in the scorecard, it ranked behind Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nevada. Arizona scored “average,” its highest mark, in the outdoor recreation category, since it doesn’t have an office of outdoor recreation or statewide standards for environmental education, according to the report. In “access to public lands,” Arizona received the lowest possible score, “needs improvement,” because of a 2010 piece of legislation that eliminated funding for the State Parks Heritage Fund, which drew from state lottery funds, according to the report.

The access to public lands category also earned the state low marks because of designations by the Arizona Navigable Stream Adjudication Commission. The commission determines what waterways in the state are navigable and, currently, only permits navigation — the ability to float through private property — on the Colorado River. Navigability factored into scores because it can carry slightly different definitions across state lines, according to the report. Both Montana and Idaho were commended for “exemplary” access to waterways. Allowing boats to float through private land usually means there are walkable routes along the banks of the waterways, the report says.

Jesse Prentice-Dunn, who co-authored the report, said it’s important because it keeps aggressive landowners from doing things such as stringing barbed wire across waterways to keep people off their property. He said he knows of such instances occurring in other states, but not in Arizona.

George Mehnert, the commission’s director, said the Colorado River has that navigable distinction because it is federally managed and out of the commission’s control. Other waterways regulated by the state do not have the same distinction, he said. Mehnert, in an interview Tuesday, said the commission is preparing reports and won’t make the other five rivers navigable this year. Attorneys representing the communities near those bodies of water can appeal the commission’s decision to the Arizona Superior Court. The other five waterways are the San Pedro, Santa Cruz, Gila, Salt and Verde rivers.

Energy rules score low

At Dead Horse Ranch State Park near Cottonwood, recreation includes fishing, horseback riding, hiking, biking and camping. (Photo: Mark Henle/The Republic)

The scorecard also dinged Arizona with a “needs improvement” score in the responsible energy development category. Prentice-Dunn said the low score was due in part to Arizona’s energy development policies. The state requires reporting of oil and gas spills within 24 hours, but doesn’t make those reports readily available to the public, he said.Arizona also doesn’t have any fracking chemical disclosure rules and allows voluntary reports through FracFocus, an industry-operated website that provides public access to chemical usage. “This is something that Colorado, New Mexico and Utah all have databases online, so that’s certainly an area where Arizona could improve,” he said. “In the West, in particular, energy communities and development kind of feel like they’re on a collision course … it really helps for the public to have the impacts of what energy development are.”

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in the Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow the azcentral and Arizona Republic environmental reporting team at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.