Wildlife 20/20 provides broad strategic guidance for all department programs. It is intended to be a living document that conveys policy direction that the Arizona Game and Fish Commission has provided to the department to guide its work into the future. It will be complemented by additional plans designed to provide more specific direction, as needed.

This strategic plan identifies the management direction that the Arizona Game and Fish Commission has provided to the Department for the next six years. The plan discusses the most important issues facing the Department, including the recruitment and retention of hunters, anglers and shooting sports participants, and explains how the Department plans to respond to those issues.

Prior strategic plans focused on just one of the programmatic areas for which the Department is responsible; for example, Wildlife 2006 was solely a wildlife strategic plan. In contrast, Wildlife 2012 provides strategic guidance for all programs within the Arizona Game and Fish Department. It emphasizes wildlife management, which is the Department’s primary focus. However, Wildlife 2012 also addresses off-highway vehicle and watercraft recreation beyond their impacts to wildlife resources, as well as the administration of the Department.

Apache trout is a federally threatened salmonid native to headwaters of the Little Colorado, Black, and White rivers in east-central Arizona. Decline of Apache trout to threatened status was attributed to over-fishing, habitat degradation and negative interactions (predation, competition and hybridization) with introduced nonnative salmonids. Although over-fishing is no longer considered a threat, habitat degradation and negative interactions with nonnative salmonids continue to threaten Apache trout, and it is towards these threats that recovery actions are directed. While barrier construction began in 1979 and livestock exclusion began in the mid-1980s, the efficacy of these recovery actions at increasing Apache trout abundance and improving habitat condition had not been evaluated. We therefore initiated a study to evaluate the efficacy of riparian fencing and barriers.