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.

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.

Arizona’s CWCS is a document that plans for the conservation of species and their habitats. Working at large and small landscape scales, the plan first develops conservation actions to address stressors to habitats. This approach is meant to benefit all wildlife, including both vulnerable and common species, by managing for the habitat and resources upon which they depend. An example of this type of conservation action would be to identify important wildlife movement corridors and protecting them to minimize habitat fragmentation. To facilitate conservation of many species acting at different scales, Arizona’s CWCS uses a multi-scale approach to classifying habitat types within Arizona.