Looking Forward - A Conservation Vision
 

Last year, DFLT in concert with staff from The Nature Conservancy in Arizona (TNC) began a scientific "visioning" process, based upon TNC's many years of conservation planning experience. This process has led to the development of a conceptual Conservation Plan for the Desert Foothills region. Over the summer DFLT and TNC staff assembled written and digital information compiled by public and private agencies and developed a Geographic Information System (GIS) database which allowed us to map out valuable habitat areas within our region. This was no small task and involved many hours of painstaking research, phone calls and office visits. All of the agencies we contacted were very generous and supplied many written reports and mega-bytes of data.

We have now begun a process to select certain important habitat characteristics and are beginning to form a picture of the most significant natural areas left in our region. The next step is a difficult one - prioritizing what we are now calling "conservation opportunities", developing strategies for involving landowners in the conservation process and raising the funds to permanently protect these areas.

This coming year we will be working with our local partners including both the Towns of Cave Creek and Carefree, The Nature Conservancy, Tonto National Forest and various Maricopa County agencies to develop a regional "Natural Resource Initiative" which will use the findings of our Conservation Plan as its core. We welcome at least two new partners in this endeavor, the nationally known conservation organization Trust for Public Lands and another local land trust, Black Mountain Conservancy.

Together, we hope to formulate and promote a vision for local land conservation that garners broad public support and realizes the dream of land trust founders in creating an intact and ecologically functioning landscape in the Desert Foothills region. Look forward to progress reports in upcoming DFLT newsletters.