On the County's behalf, the Arizona Open Land Trust has entered into two purchase agreements for the Buckelew Farms property. Under this conservation acquisition proposal, farming would continue in the areas currently farmed, grazing would continue on a seasonal basis, and the popular annual pumpkin festival would continue. However, the County and the Buckelew's would work together to enhance opportunities for wildlife habitat on the farm and grazing lands.

This report and the accompanying Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets summarize the results of the workshop held in Florence, Arizona in 2010. At this workshop, stakeholders representing a broad range of organizations and interests identified and mapped the locations of important wildlife linkages across Pinal County. This report provides background information on the importance and benefits of conserving wildlife linkages for both people and wildlife in Pinal County and describes the methods used during stakeholder workshops and in developing the accompanying GIS products. It includes a series of maps generated from the digitized stakeholder data that depict the general locations of wildlife linkages and potential barriers to wildlife movement within Pinal County. The maps are followed by tables with descriptive information about the habitat areas each linkage connects, the species each linkage serves, and known threats and potential conservation opportunities associated with each linkage.

A diverse community of abundant, native amphibians is persisting along waterways of urban and urbanizing Tucson. Community and government leaders in Tucson support the concept of urban amphibian conservation in principle. Meanwhile, concurrent, commingled plans for infrastructure improvements and ecological restoration along major urban riparian corridors are being developed under leadership from Pima County, City of Tucson, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Paradoxically, as this work gets underway, it could impact local amphibian populations – temporarily via direct earth-moving impacts, and permanently via elimination of seasonal waters in which amphibians breed. Pima County wishes to minimize these negative impacts, and to learn how to protect, manage and improve habitat conditions for native amphibians. This report describes means by which—despite complex public health issues—such conservation may be possible with proper planning.

To facilitate development of the Environmental Impact Statement which must accompany the Section 10 multi-species conservation proposal, a series of issue papers were prepared. In Pima County, ranching is uniquely able to preserve the integrity of vast tracts of connected and unfragmented open space and wildlife habitat. This study reviews the effect of five alternative permit strategies on the County's ability to preserve unfragmented landscapes through conserving ranch lands.

Demonstrates that an effort to protect only listed species would lead to a reserve that was closer to the urbanizing areas of Tucson, and therefore more expensive. The Listed Species Reserve is also one that makes a call on more non-federal land. By limiting the focus of the reserve to listed species, the broader and long term benefits are lost, and trade-offs of high potential habitat are not based on such comprehensive biological principles.