Heritage Fund

Turning ranch into public asset benefits wildlife

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[Source: Opinions, AZ Republic]

A historic ranch, sitting in the middle of the Agua Fria National Monument, is about to be protected.

The 199-acre private inholding has rich riparian habitat and a collection of buildings that includes bunkhouses, two houses and a barn. With easy access to the Valley, right along Interstate 17, the site has enormous potential for education and outdoor recreation.

The Arizona Game and Fish Commission stepped in to put this quintessentially Western site into public stewardship. In October, it approved the acquisition of Horseshoe Ranch with money from the Heritage Fund and other sources. A staff member will live on site, providing a much-needed layer of security for a place that’s so close to a major metropolitan area. The monument has petroglyphs and archaeological sites that need the extra oversight.

This is a winning move from many angles. Acquiring the ranch ensures easy public access to the national monument, which might otherwise be limited.

Wildlife benefits from keeping this vast landscape intact, avoiding fragmentation from development. The monument and ranch are home to animals that range from a large herd of pronghorn to javelinas and mountain lions. Endangered species there include the Gila topminnow and desert pupfish.

Game and Fish will work with other agencies to restore grasslands and manage the critical Agua Fria watershed.

The public can enjoy the opportunities for hunting, fishing, exploring, viewing wildlife and bird watching. The Agua Fria was designated as an “important bird area” by the National Audubon Society.

It took a lot of partners to put this $3.3 million deal together. The owner had bought the land with the goal of a federal land exchange. When that didn’t work out, the Trust for Public Land helped carry the property.

No tax dollars from the state general fund are going toward the purchase, which will be paid through the Lottery-supported Heritage Fund (which has a dedicated land-acquisition fund) and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife grant. The ranch’s 68,000-acre grazing rights are being bought with help from the Arizona Antelope Foundation ($185,000) and the National Wild Turkey Federation ($1,000), using money raised from raffling special big-game tags.

The partnerships will continue to support the management of the ranch. A few strings remained to be tied, including a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Agua Fria National Monument.

Then this unique property will belong to all Arizonans from now on.

Arizona’s Heritage Fund celebrates 20 years of helping Arizona wildlife

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[Source: Gretchen Mominee, Examiner.com]

Photo: Gretchen Mominee

Twenty years ago, Arizona residents voted almost two to one to create the Heritage Fund, showing a “huge groundswell of grassroots support” from a “broad base of different groups” according to Lynda Lambert, Public Information Officer for  Arizona Game and Fish Department. What’s not to like? The Heritage Fund benefits native wildlife and habitats, it benefits rural communities, and it benefits anyone who loves the outdoors — all at no cost to the taxpayers.

The Heritage Fund is supported entirely by sales of Arizona Lottery tickets, and the Fund allows the Arizona Game and Fish Department to effectively operate a number of their programs and projects. In addition, the Fund is matched with federal dollars, which creates a statewide impact, helping not only the wildlife itself, but also helping the state economy. It is particularly an asset to rural communities, where the Fund has helped purchase land, restore habitat and create public access areas which draw hunters, anglers, hikers and birdwatchers. In fact, the Heritage Fund has been responsible for opening two million acres for public access in Arizona.

The Heritage Fund also supports environmental education, reaching out to almost 40,000 fourth graders annually. The Fund has given 640 grants that have gone toward projects such as creating schoolyard wildlife habitats and funding school outings so that students are able to directly experience the impacts of invasive species such as crayfish.

The Heritage Fund has also helped with bald eagle management. Lambert noted that the state has gone from 11 pairs of bald eagles in teh 1970s to 52 nesting pairs today. Part of the reason for their numbers increasing is undoubtedly due to DDT being banned, but the Heritage Fund has also played a role in their comeback, establishing a program in which teams of seasonal field employees monitor the nesting sites, estimating when the eggs hatch and intervening in cases in which babies have fallen.  The teams also help educate the public, ensuring that seasonal closures are respected and explaining to hikers and boaters the reason for the closures.

The Heritage Fund has also been integral in assisting with reintroduction projects such as bringing the black-footed ferret, California condors and black-tailed prairie dogs back to their native habitat. The Fund also supports habitat restoration efforts which help all the native species in those areas, not just one reintroduced species, since a healthy habitat for a black-footed ferret is also going to tend to be a healthy environment for other native plants and animals. And, Lambert noted, “Arizona has the highest

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Arizona Game & Fish’s Heritage Fund celebrates 20 years of conserving Arizona’s wildlife

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If you voted in Arizona in 1990, chances are you voted in favor of the initiative that created the Heritage Fund. Arizonans showed their overwhelming support for wildlife by passing the measure by a 2-to-1 ratio.

For the past 20 years the Heritage Fund has made a difference not just to wildlife conservation efforts, but also to the state’s economy, public access, environmental education and outdoor recreation.

Notable accomplishments of the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Heritage dollars over the past two decades include:

  • Contributing to local economies through the awarding of more than 640 grants totaling nearly $13 million dollars across all of Arizona’s counties.
  • Supporting the award-winning and nationally-recognized Bald Eagle Nestwatch Program, which has been key in helping the state’s bald eagle population grow more than 600 percent over the past 30 years.
  • Reintroducing black-footed ferrets, California condors and black-tailed prairie dogs, which had disappeared from the state.
  • Recovering Apache trout to the point where the species could be downlisted from “endangered” to “threatened,” allowing fishing opportunities for this native species.
  • Managing the conservation of more than 600 species, including threatened and endangered species like the Sonoran pronghorn, desert tortoise, Chiricahua leopard frog, and Mount Graham red squirrels.
  • Supporting representation of Arizona’s interests with regard to wildlife conservation, land use and water policy decisions.
  • Providing funding to acquire nearly 18,000 acres for public enjoyment and wildlife recreation, including wildlife areas at Becker Lake, Whitewater Draw, the Verde River, and Sipe White Mountain.
  • Constructing barrier-free fishing piers to increase angler access at Woodland, Mittry, Patagonia, Kaibab, Riggs and Rose Canyon lakes.
  • Development of the award-winning Urban Fish Stocking program to provide urban recreational opportunities to the public.
  • Creation of schoolyard habitats for student learning that have been awarded the “Governor’s Pride” and Westmarc’s “Best of the West” awards.
  • Securing public land access to more than 2 million acres in the state.

“Sometimes voters approve a measure, and they don’t know what happens after that,” says Larry Voyles, director for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “We want to make sure Arizonans know this money went to the cause they chose and help them see the far-reaching effects it has had not only on Arizona’s precious wildlife, but also on the economy, especially in rural communities, and their local area.”

The Heritage Fund gives money from lottery ticket sales to conservation efforts like protecting endangered species, acquiring habitat for the benefit of sensitive species, providing access to outdoor recreational opportunities, and educating children and adults about wildlife.

The Heritage Fund constitutes 12 percent of Game and Fish’s overall budget and is a critical funding source for leveraging federal grants for even greater conservation benefit. The department does not receive any of the state’s general tax revenues. It’s funding for wildlife conservation and management comes primarily from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, federal excise taxes on certain hunting and fishing gear, and a couple of other key sources such as the Heritage Fund.

The Game & Fish Heritage Fund: What its loss will mean to Arizona

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On January 15, 2010, the Governor’s office released a budget plan that proposes to permanently eliminate the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s voter-approved $10 million Heritage Fund and redirect all Arizona State Lottery revenue to the state’s general fund.  That proposal has been sent for consideration by the Legislature.

Adoption of this proposal could have significant impacts on Arizona’s land use and growth that will be vital for the state’s economic recovery, as well as affecting outdoor recreationists and the future well-being of the state’s wildlife.

Arizona Game and Fish is a business-model agency that receives no Arizona tax dollars.  The department acknowledges the difficulties the state faces in addressing the budget situation, but it is critical that the customers who pay the bills in this “user pay, user benefit” model are informed and educated on the potential statewide effects that could result from a permanent elimination of Heritage funding.  Those effects potentially include constraints on land use that could affect our state’s economic recovery.

The 45-minute video below is from an informational public presentation and webcast given by the department on Feb. 2 at its Phoenix office.  The presentation covers the history of the Heritage Fund, what it’s used for, how it benefits Arizona, and the impacts to Arizona citizens if the fund is lost.