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 document contains laws related to wildlife in Arizona, from statehood in 1912 through 1962. This is a supplement to “Bringing Back the Game: Arizona Wildlife Management, 1912–1962,” a book of wildlife management history published by the Arizona Game and Fish Department in 2012.

Included are those bills passed by the Arizona State Legislature between 1912 and 1962, signed by the governor and incorporated as “Game and Fish Law” under the Arizona Revised Statutes. Other initiatives, referenda, and statutes pertaining to wildlife (including predatory and noxious animals) are also included, thereby providing an accessible resource for those interested in the history of Arizona’s wildlife laws.

This document is neither exhaustive nor complete. Some bills that are arcane or repetitive, or that served a housekeeping purpose, are not included. Some legislation is summarized with annotations by the author and not presented verbatim. The purpose is illustrative only and not intended to either replace the actual laws, or be taken as current law.

In Arizona, various nonnative trout have been stocked since the early 1900s, and trout angling remains an important component of the sportfishing industry. These nonnative rainbow trout may have contributed to the decline of Little Colorado spinedace. The overall purpose of the research was to define interactions so that impacts to both trout management and spinedace populations can be minimized. Our objectives covered 5 broad areas of potential interaction: habitat use, diet, predation, health, and distribution.

Although not Federally listed as threatened or endangered, the roundtail chub, also a sportfish in Arizona, is nearly extirpated from sections of the Verde and Salt river drainages. The purpose of this investigation, from March 1998 through March 2000, was to describe ecological requirements and population dynamics of roundtail chub. The objectives were to describe species composition, distribution and abundance, quantify habitat selection by different life stages, estimate population size, quantify movement and age and growth, and describe the reproductive capacity of roundtail chub.

Depending on wildlife species mobility and habitat requirements, we suspect that fire affect species differently, especially on sky islands where whole habitats could be reduced in size or destroyed. We evaluated effects of fire and vegetation destruction on low, moderate, and high mobility wildlife species. Specifically, we focused on the following species or groups: lizards; small mammals, primarily rodents; mid-sized carnivores, specifically gray fox, bobcats, and coyotes; and black bears.

The southwestern United States and Sonora, Mexico are the extreme northern limits of the jaguar’s (Panthera onca) range, which primarily extends from central Mexico south through Central and South America to northern Argentina. Recently, the jaguar ranged as far north as Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Over the last century, the jaguar’s range has been reduced to approximately 46% of its historic range due to hunting pressure and habitat loss. The greatest loss of occupied range has occurred in the southern United States, northern Mexico, northern Brazil, and southern Argentina. Since 1900, jaguars have been documented occasionally in the southwestern United States, but the number of sightings per decade has declined over the last 100 years with only 4 verified sightings between 1970 and 2000. The objectives of our analysis were twofold: (1) characterize potential jaguar habitat in Arizona from historic sighting records, and (2) create a statewide habitat suitability map.