Annual Report 2023 - ALWT

Preserving Land and Water for Future Generations

IN GRATITUDE

Together with you, Arizona Land and Water Trust continues to celebrate over 45 years of protecting Southern Arizona’s western landscapes, farms and ranches, wildlife habitat, and the waters that sustain them. We are deeply grateful for our growing list of individuals, foundations, agencies and organizations who partnered with us to make significant strides over the last year. We hope you enjoy our annual report and thank you for these accomplishments in land and water conservation.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN 2021 AND 2022

IN THIS REPORT

Working Landscapes and Water

The Trust works with farmers and ranchers to protect working landscapes and the waters that sustain them. Working landscapes are ecologically and socially connected areas, often linked with other protected areas. Our landowner partners steward ecologically rich landscapes and sustain key waters that underpin healthy watersheds.

Cover: Water storage pools for irrigation and stock on Mormon farms at Saint David, Arizona. Lee, Russell, photographer. United States Saint David Arizona Cochise County, 1940. Apr.-May. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017786405/.

Opposite: Finley Family at Santa Cruz River, 1910 (William L. Finley Photographs Collection Oregon Historical Society Library). Thank you to Laura Cray, Digital Services Librarian, Oregon Historical Society, for providing information on the Finleys and their trip to Tucson in 1910.

This past year has been a busy one with several significant project milestones and team transitions in the Trust’s Land and Water Program. In fiscal year 2022 we completed permanent land conservation projects on over 8,680 acres across our focus area in southeastern Arizona. These include projects protecting 150 acres in the San Rafael Valley, 1,860 acres in the Whetstone Mountains, 1,394 acres in the Mule Mountains, 282 acres along Sopori Creek, as well as our largest conservation easement to date on 5,000 acres of the Vera Earl Ranch north of Sonoita. Each of these properties expands upon a larger network of protected open spaces, furthering our organization’s mission to conserve the deserts, grassland valleys, Madrean woodlands, washes and rivers that make our region such a special place.

In this same time period the Arizona Land and Water Trust also had a number of program staff transitions. We said goodbye to John Barrett and Paul Maynard on our land team and more recently to Bailey Kennett, our longtime Desert Rivers Program Director. I was promoted to Land Program Director, we welcomed Andrew Quarles as our Stewardship Manager, and we have continued to build our program team with Yvonne Marshall joining as Land Project Manager in June 2023 (not to mention thanking our departing Interim Executive Director and former Deputy Director Scott McDonald for his great service and welcoming our new Executive Director Michael McDonald this Spring!).

Through these transitions I’m proud to say that our team has maintained strong relationships with our landowner and program partners and continues to move forward a number of high priority conservation projects. We’ve also made efforts to begin incorporating climate resiliency into our project planning and long-term stewardship goals, striving to be an asset to our landowners as they face more variable weather and increased heat and drought on the landscape (See Andrew Quarles’ write up on the Trust’s resiliency efforts on page 18). I’m excited and invigorated by the energy and ideas that our new team members bring to the organization and look forward to seeing what we accomplish together in the year ahead!

Cameron Becker

A SENSE OF HOW WATER WORKS

Text by Amy Mc Coy

Images by Nancy Chilton

Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water, and nobody knows what it is.

~ D. H. Lawrence in Pansies

As the most critical and essential ingredient of all life on Earth - from bacteria to plants to humans – the ubiquity of water can sometimes mask the magnitude of its importance. Since time immemorial, water has invigorated the imagination and fervor of human beings through poems, prayers, songs, science, laws, conflicts, and rituals. In a visceral sense, water is humanity’s closest companion. From beginning to end, our bodies are supported, structured, and sustained by water, just as our ability to survive and thrive hinges on water. We rely on water for the necessary tasks of daily living, for growing and consuming food, and as the core ingredient in power production and technology.

However, for all its importance, water retains an aura of intrigue. How can a molecule of such remarkable simplicity be the key to life on earth? How can water be uniformly essential across the full spectrum of living creatures while also evoking a sense of personal wonderment and connection in individuals? Despite its scientific, legal, and economic classifications, water is a mystery, and one that will not be solved here. The story told here is an invitation to reflect on water as it makes itself known in our lives and how it reveals itself through our senses.

Scent – How Water Travels

Rivers are the old roads as are songs, to traverse memory.

Joy Harjo, 23rd United States Poet Laureate, in American Sunrise

Often, water announces its presence in the desert as a scent first, rain second. The oils of the creosote bush, which grow only in the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts, are activated by moisture in the air, releasing the signature perfume of the desert as an early announcement that rain is on the way. The scent of a soaking summer monsoon rain can embed itself into nostalgic memory, evoking an audible sigh of relief from the relentless heat of summer and gratitude that all forms of desert life will receive a much-needed sip of water.

Just as creosotes send a fragrant alert of oncoming rains, the waft of riparian trees speak to how desert streams move water. Cottonwood trees extend their roots like arms into streambeds and shallow groundwater pools, taking deep and unhurried drinks of flowing water. Studies at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research have observed the patterns of transpiration in riparian trees and while they may appear sedentary, they are by no means static. Cottonwood trees continuously expand and contract as they draw water up through the trunk and branches to the canopy of leaves that then release water vapor into the air. As rhythmic as breathing lungs, cottonwoods move water from the earth to the air, emitting a distinctive balm and a reminder that water travels from the soil to the atmosphere.

Sight – How Water Partners

Running water is something for a Southwesterner to get excited about. It’s scarce, it’s cool, it’s wet, and it creates an oasis of shade, a green retreat from the sun and desiccation of the surrounding country.

Richard Shelton in Going Back to Bisbee

Among the sky island mountains and rolling lowlands of the Sonoran Desert, the first sight of water is often not water at all, but rather a vein of trees bright against the earthen hues of the desert floor. Ribbons of green have served as visible way

markers for humans across the eras, protecting them from the unyielding power of the sun, offering them fresh water beneath leafy ceilings of shade. Travelers across the centuries have established themselves along waterways, so much so that lines connecting historic human communities overlay nearly exactly with the pathway of rivers.

Ecologically and hydrologically, riparian corridors are a testament to nature’s elegant tapestry of reciprocity. Riparian tree seeds are dispersed during high flows, extending their roots to stabilize the floodplain soils. Thick tree canopies shield springs and streams from the evaporating potency of the sun and nurture a thriving community of shrubs, grasses, and flowering plants. The entire riparian corridor calls in migrating and resident birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. When water partners with the life it supports, the power of mutuality and connection becomes visible.

Taste – How Water Provides

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering “oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?”

Mary Oliver in At Blackwater Pond

So often, the taste of water is most expressed in the thirst that it quenches. And the desert is a place of great thirst, made even more acute by increasingly severe droughts, sporadic rains, and rising summer temperatures. In the first week of July 2023, the earth’s average temperature was the highest ever recorded, a sign that the planet itself is reaching new levels of thirst. With over 80% of rivers in the southwestern U.S. degraded, significantly altered, and/or de-watered, never has it been more important to recognize and protect all the sources of water in the desert, both above and below ground.

Surface flows and groundwater aquifers work in tandem to hydrate riparian corridors, support wildlife, and anchor the very rhythms of desert ecosystems. These sources are also tapped to supply human communities with drinking water and

provide working landscapes with irrigation to grow crops. Southern Arizona has a dynamic food history, from the rich biodiversity of indigenous crops curated and cultivated to thrive in the desert, to the ranches that maintain vast open spaces, to the diversity of endemic flora and fauna. Weaving through it all is water, relying on the attentive eye of human stewards to ensure a wise balance of use between people and the land.

Sound – How Water Sculpts

Someone said it is going to rain. I think it is not so. Because I have not yet felt the earth and the way it holds still in anticipation.

Ofelia Zepeda in It is Going to Rain

The sound of water is the sound of connection. Imagine traveling across the land as birds chirp and a breeze rustles grass and trees around you. Then, as you move forward, the whisper of water in a stream, audible enough to catch your attention. The sound is so sudden that you stop, move a few feet back, and then lean your ear forward to try and mark the exact spot where the rush of water can first be heard. This threshold of sound is invisible to the eye, knowable only through the ears or as a vibration through the earth. A threshold that is exquisitely and profoundly singular for every individual. This essence of personal connection and awareness that water is near, manifest at the intersection of a body in motion and the flowing wave of sound.

Moving water makes its presence known in the tone, timber, and tempo of its pulse. An oncoming storm cues the opening bars of a symphony, bringing first wind and then stillness, before the staccato taps of raindrops falling to the earth. Arroyos, dry and quiet, erupt in a percussion chorus, the leading edge of a flash flood roaring and pounding down the waterway. It is an auspicious stroke of luck to hear the front foot of a flood, both to safely move out of the way and to witness the spontaneous and forceful crescendo of water as it makes rivers out of dry channels.

Feel – How Water Revives

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land.

Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass

Water cleans, refreshes, and relieves. Nowhere is this more visceral than in the arrival of desert monsoon storms, dropping the temperature from triple to double digits in a matter of minutes and dispensing sheets of rain that are visible from miles away. Desert-adapted species, like the Leopard Frog and Gila Topminnow, burrow deep into ephemeral streams and wait for the rain to soften the earth and signal their cacophonous emergence. Ocotillo leaves break open from dry stalks with remarkable speed, sometimes transforming a completely barren plant to shimmering green rods in less than 36 hours.

The summer 2020 was infamously described as the “nonsoon” in southeastern Arizona, when a scant 0.4 inches of rain fell as daily temperatures hovered above 100 degrees. The absence of cooling storms not only felt uncomfortable, but alarming – what would life in the desert be like without rain to cool, replenish, and revive its inhabitants and ensure human health and well-being? Fortunately, 2021 and 2022 brought record-breaking monsoon rains and a reminder of the emotional and physical feeling of security that water is still available. Water connects us to the vibrant cycles of life, but also to our own vulnerability in its absence. Water reminds us of our responsibility to care for it as a first step of caring for ourselves and for our collective future.

Amy McCoy is a founding partner of AMP Insights, a consulting firm focused on ensuring water for rivers and people. After 18 years in the Sonoran Desert, she recently returned home to Colorado Springs and the creeks and mountain trails of her childhood.

Nancy Chilton is a teaching artist and board member at The Drawing Studio in Tucson, Arizona, and has been creating art inspired by the Sonoran Desert and its denizens for four decades.

M Diamond Ranch (ALWT)

Protected by Arizona Land and Water Trust

Triangle Bar (ALWT)

Clyne (ALWT)

Edgar Canyon (ALWT)

Sopori Creek and Farm (ALWT)

M Diamond (ALWT)

O-O Ranch (ALWT)

BOARD VISIT TO COCHISE STRONGHOLD RANCH

In mid-November 2022 the Board of Directors and Trust staff traveled to Cochise County to visit Cochise Stronghold Ranch in the Dragoon Mountains of southeastern Arizona. The group was graciously hosted by landowners Dr. Douglas and Roma Payne. The day was mild and clear and it was wonderful to be able to not only see the work of the Trust firsthand but also to hear from the Paynes about why this land is meaningful to them and why it’s important to protect the legacy of this ranch.

The Cochise Stronghold Ranch is unique for its history and rich biodiversity. The ranch history spans 1000’s of years, from the ancient Hunter-Gatherer culture, to the Mogollon people and on to the Chiricahua Apaches. The Dragoon Mountains were the favorite stronghold and became the final resting place for the Apache Chief Cochise (died June 8, 1874). Today the area boasts abundant wildlife, including Coues whitetail (a smaller sub-species of whitetailed deer) and mule deer, mountain lion, bobcat, javelina (peccaries), fox, black bear, and ring-tailed cat among many others. Additionally, the area is a birder’s paradise with over 100 species seen regularly on the ranch.

The Trust is pursuing federal Forest Legacy Program funding to permanently protect this 552-acre historic ranch of Madrean Pine/Oak Woodlands within the Sky Islands, sharing two miles of boundary with the Coronado National Forest (US Forest Service) in the Dragoon Mountains. This ranch protection project seeks to preserve habitat benefitting seven federally-listed species as well as significant archaeological resources.

After the Cochise Stronghold Ranch tour the board and staff visited the nearby Amerind Museum and enjoyed a picnic lunch before heading back to Tucson. Board and staff agree that regular field trips to visit the landscapes the Trust protects are key to continually understanding and appreciating the Trust’s work. Visiting with the landowners, who are often connected to these ranches

Ring-tailed Cat (ALWT)

through generations, underpins the critical nature of land protection in perpetuity. Farm and ranch owners share their deep ties to the land and water that sustain their operations and to their nearby rural communities. Board members, as stewards of the organization, return recharged by their own deep connection to the Trust’s mission and purpose. As Land and Water Committee Chair Les Corey says, “There is nothing like getting out there on the land”.

Special Status Species documented within 5 miles of the Ranch

Amphibians

Chiricahua Leopard Frog

Reptiles

Desert Box Turtle

Giant Spotted Whiptail

Gila Monster Plants

Black-spined Hedgehog Cactus

Button Cactus

Catalina Beardtongue

Lemmon’s Lupine

White Fishhook Cactus

Birds

American Peregrine Falcon

Mexican Spotted Owl Mammals

Bat Colony

Mexican Long-tongued Bat

Lesser Long-nosed Bat

Snail

Shortneck Snaggletooth

Left: Members of the Board of Directors and Staff at the grounds of Cochise Strongold Ranch with host Doug Payne (far left) (Les Corey)

Half Moon Tank, Cochise Stronghold (Ken Bosma, Flickr.com)

TRIBUTE TO PATSY WATERFALL STEWARDSHIP THROUGH RESTORATION

Founding Member of Arizona Land and Water Trust

August 5th, 1936 - March 16, 2023

Patsy Waterfall was a prominent figure in our community, dedicating her time and skills to advocating for women’s rights and preserving our beautiful Southern Arizona landscapes. As a native Tucsonan, she felt a deep connection to the native plants, animals, and critical waterways.

Alongside her dearest friend Reyn Voevodsky and a team of volunteers, she spearheaded an effort to secure legislation allowing for conservation easements in Arizona. The success of this effort changed dramatically the Arizona Land and Water Trust’s ability to protect thousands of acres in perpetuity.

You can make tribute donations in honor of Patsy to the Arizona Land and Water Trust. A unique fund has been established in her memory to specifically support their conservation easement efforts. Please note that by contributing to the Arizona Land and Water Trust, you are helping to fulfill the dream of many, including Patsy, to keep Southern Arizona a thriving, healthy and stunning area to call home.

Is simply protecting land in perpetuity enough? Can Arizona Land and Water Trust provide more value to our landowner partners and the lands we cooperatively steward? We say Yes! These questions have driven much of the Trust’s work over the last several years focused on habitat restoration, increased ecosystem resiliency, and improving the resource concerns of our landowners. From our groundbreaking work on water transactions through our Desert Rivers Program, our landscape restoration projects, and our ongoing climate planning efforts, the Trust seeks to expand our positive impact on Southern Arizona and the lands we steward by going beyond just protecting land and water.

Our work on landscape restoration is a value add to the landowner as well because we collaborate with them to identify and repair resource concerns at no cost to them. This allows them to concentrate on their agricultural operation and protects the ranching heritage of Southern Arizona. Strong relationships with partners like the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Department of Defense (DoD) make this possible.

Our work on the Pyeatt Ranch and Diamond C Ranch easements illustrates how we are working toward these goals. Collaborating with Pyeatt landowner Manuel Murrieta and multiple partners including Borderlands Restoration Network (BRN), the US Forest Service (USFS), and the NRCS, we have begun a multi-stage restoration project that covers both protected private lands and the Coronado National Forest.

The current stage of the project focuses on using natural infrastructure in dryland streams (NIDS). The Trust mainly uses loose-rock structures such as one-rock dams, media lunas, and Zuni bowls, which are low-tech and low-impact and have been extensively researched and tested across Southern Arizona. They are highly effective tools in strengthening riparian habitats through slowing the flow of water, improving infiltration into the water table, and mitigating erosion. The Trust is contracting with BRN to install NIDS along an eroding channel which is threatening a road important to the Pyeatt Ranch cattle operation. Once these structures are finished, BRN sows them with a native seed mix that they harvest

Patsy Waterfall with her daughter Julia Waterfall-Kanter

and formulate specifically for this purpose. Planting the structures with native species binds them together with the plant’s roots and provides habitat for insects and animals. Future stages of this project will involve synchronizing efforts with the USFS, as they conduct wildfire fuels mitigation and the NRCS on their grassland restoration through mesquite removal projects.

The Trust is also working with BRN to conduct similar projects on the Babocomari Ranch and the Emmerson easement. Five gabions are planned to be repaired in a small tributary to the Babocomari Creek which repeatedly washes out their access road. A gabion is a metal cage filled with rock. They are porous structures that do not detain water and mimic the effects of NIDS described above. These gabions will slow the flow of water into a large sacaton grassland and flood plain helping to improve infiltration for the intact cottonwood Cienega along Babocomari Creek. On the Emmerson easement BRN will be installing about 125 NIDS along an eroding channel. This project will help to improve water quality in the Babocomari Creek and further on into the San Pedro River by reducing flood waters carrying E. Coli and other bacteria.

Through generous funding from the Caterpillar Foundation, the Trust is working on another NIDS project on Sopori Farm. In September work will begin on treating approximately 2.5 miles of stream channels with about 150 loose-rock structures and native seed. In addition to the benefits noted above, this project will also help to reduce flood risk to the downstream community of Amado.

In total these projects will restore and strengthen 4.5 miles of riparian habitat by installing over 300 NIDS and sowing native seeds. While it is just a small step, projects like these are able to support the needs of our landowner partners while also supporting working landscapes and the waters that sustain them. It is these win-win situations that will help accomplish our habitat restoration and resiliency goals as the Trust looks forward to future projects.

Andrew Quarles

Babocomari (Steve Strom)

BRN working at Pyeatt Ranch (ALWT)

FRIDAY VIRTUAL HAPPY HOURS

Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, the Trust has been hosting virtual happy hours as part of the Trust’s endeavors to stay connected with as many of our supporters as possible while still being mindful of Covid-19 protocols. These extremely popular, easily attended events feature fascinating speakers who are well known in their fields of expertise.

Enabled by Zoom online technology, the sessions carry forward to this day with Trust plans to continue them well into the future, thus allowing partners of the Trust to talk about and/or learn about subjects including:

ƒ Area petroglyphs

ƒ Bats and wildcats

ƒ Climate trends

ƒ Local agriculture

ƒ Specific Trust land and water protection efforts

Recordings of most of these virtual happy hour events may be found on the Trust’s website, www.alwt.org and if you are not currently receiving email notices with details on upcoming virtual happy hour events, please email info@alwt.org and we will add you to our email distributions!

Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness (BLM)

SUSTAINING DONORS – MAKING A LASTING IMPACT

Increase your impact on land conservation in Arizona and consider becoming a Sustaining supporter with Arizona Land and Water Trust. When you sign up to become a Sustaining Donor, you can make a recurring contribution in an amount that fits your budget, helping create a continuous base of support to protect land, yearround, across Southern Arizona. And when we know we can count on your ongoing support, we can plan ambitious programs to save more of Southern Arizona’s western landscapes, working farms and ranches, wildlife habitat, and the waters that sustain them. Your support is needed now more than ever so that the Trust’s important work can continue. Join us!

Ways to Become a Sustaining Donor

ƒ With the donation envelope enclosed with this Annual Report;

ƒ Online at www.alwt.org; or

ƒ By calling the Trust office at (520) 577-8564

How it Works

ƒ Monthly giving starts at an affordable $15 per month, but the sky’s the limit!

ƒ You determine the timing of your support – monthly, every three months, quarterly etc.

ƒ Your credit card will be automatically billed on or around the 15th of the month.

ƒ A record of your recurring gift will show on your credit card statement or checking account and serve as your receipt.

ƒ You may adjust the timing of your gift, increase, decrease or cancel the amount anytime by calling our office at (520) 577-8564.

ƒ For tax purposes, you will receive an annual statement in January acknowledging all your transactions for the prior year.

Why Sign Up?

Giving is easy and you can feel good about supporting the Trust year-round without the hassle of continuously visiting our site to donate or mailing a check. Monthly giving allows you to contribute in the most convenient way: smaller, more frequent gifts. It’s a seamless and secure way to give monthly. Enter your information once and your gift will be automatically drafted from your account. Your reliable support allows the Trust to focus more resources on stewarding land, water, and wildlife.

King’s Anvil Ranch (King Family)

BOARD

Diana Freshwater, President and Founding Director

Ben Brophy, Vice President

George Ruyle, Secretary

Britton Simmons, Treasurer

Laura Brown

Les Corey

Fred Frelinghuysen

Charlotte Hanson

Pat Lopez, III

Clint Mabie

Nanette Pageau

Chuck Pettis

Karen Riggs

Bill Roe

Peggy Rowley

Bill Shaw

STAFF

Cameron Becker, Land Program Director

Yvonne Marshall, Land Project Manager

Michael McDonald, Executive Director

Camille Pons, Donor Engagement Manager

Andrew Quarles, Stewardship Manager

Don Snider, Director of Finance and Administration

Thank you to our partners who give generously of their considerable talents:

Matt Bailey

Denise Barnes

John Brady

Nancy Chilton

Robert Edison

Homer Hansen

Mary Huerstel

Amy McCoy

Will Murray

J.O. Teague

Julia Waterfall

Immature Blue Dasher, Female (Linda Rainville)

Arizona Land and Water Trust is proud to have been awarded accreditation in 2013 and accreditation renewal in 2019 by the Land Trust Alliance Accreditation Commission. Of the 1,363 land trusts across the country, the Trust is one of only 446 to have received this recognition, demonstrating sound finances, ethical conduct, responsible governance and lasting stewardship. In 2016 the Trust received the National Land Trust Excellence Award from the Land Trust Alliance, our national organization.

Pronghorn (Photo courtesy of BLM site host Alan Nyiri, flickr.com)

Corporate Design and Image:Denise Barnes

Mustang Mountains (Steve Strom)