Endangered Species Recovery on a Landscape Scale - Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge

Authors: William Radke

Year: 2018

Abstract

There are a multitude of innovative strategies available to land managers that can help facilitate landscape-level conservation and endangered species recovery in the face of expected changes in human population growth, increasing temperature, shifting rainfall patterns, and weather extremes. A good example involves Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge in Cochise County, Arizona. Here, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) has worked effectively with others to expand protection, conservation, and species recovery activities beyond the 2,765-acre (1,119-ha) Refuge owned by the Service, extending those efforts onto an additional 20,471-acres (8,284-ha) of privately owned land. Strategies included a combination of: 1) originally delineating an adequate Refuge acquisition boundary to provide for conservation opportunities at a watershed scale; 2) monitoring and assessing the impacts of potential groundwater withdrawal within the watershed upstream from the Refuge; 3) acquiring, holding, and maintaining conservation easements on lands within that acquisition boundary; 4) formalizing a Safe Harbor Agreement with the neighboring landowners to help implement recovery activities for six federally-listed threatened and endangered species; and 5) seeking and providing funding opportunities that help enable landscape enhancement activities such as erosion control, grassland and wetland restoration, and fish and wildlife reintroductions. The success of these cost-effective efforts serves as a model by those who desire to collaborate in conserving similarly situated landscapes.