Wildlife Corridors Sentinel Landscape The Sentinel Landscape Restoration Partnership brings parties together to conserve natural resources, protect working lands, and preserve the mission of Fort Huachuca in , Santa Cruz, and Pima counties, Arizona. This article introduces work on wildlife corridors in this area.

Animals need safe routes to travel to new territories or find food or mates. Where roads, development, and chop up landscapes, connected habitat can be in short supply, especially for large, wide-ranging mammals. Providing connectivity and permeability is critically important to sustaining wildlife populations. The Sentinel Landscape is home to efforts aimed at maintaining passages between mountain ranges, through valleys, and across major barriers, like highways. These projects protect known routes rather than untested pathways. The Arizona Game and Fish Department and Arizona Department of Transportation have worked statewide with land managers, universities, and non-profits to map, design, and secure such corridors. The Nature Conservancy has long partnered with private land owners, Fort Huatchuca, and others to corridors open throughout the Sentential area. Organizations working on corridor projects welcome volunteers. Mountain-to-mountain Borderlands Restoration (borderlandsrestoration.org) is protecting a corridor

between the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains. The organization is raising SIA Remote Camera money to set aside areas for animal movement within a former subdivision. Large mammals particularly benefit from connecting large Borderlands works with the community to integrate human activities into swaths of habitat. corridor design. Cross-valley The Arizona Antelope Foundation (AAF – azantelope.org) has modified 60 miles of fencing on private property and along state highway right-of-ways in the Sonoita Valley to ease passage of antelope. Unlike deer, antelope travel under rather than over fences. Raising and replacing bottom strands of barbed wire with smooth wire reconnects habitat patches and allows pronghorn to travel long distances. Cross-highway Roads, from dirt two-tracks to interstate highways, are formidable barriers to animals of all sizes and huge sources of mortality. Sky Island Alliance (SIA

– skyislandalliance.org) has been tracking area wildlife since 2001. Knowing B. Dickens where animals travel allows planning for highway crossings such as at Davidson Canyon which connects the Sentinel area to the Rincon Mountains to the north. SIA works with the Arizona Department of Transportation on crossings and helps federal land managers close unneeded roads for the benefit of wildlife. Riparian Ribbons of habitat along streams are important routes for all kinds of animals. On the Sentinel Landscape, the Bureau of Land Management San Pedro Riparian National Conservation area and other protected reaches of river to the north provide a swath of wildlife super highway (and super habitat) from the border to the Gila River. The Bureau of Land Management Las Cienegas National Conservation area protects the upper reaches of Cienega Creek, and many parties work to keep the Sonoita Creek corridor barrier-free. The Coronado National Forest and Cascabel Conservation Association are stewards for canyons whose streams connect valleys with mountains. Sentinel Landscape itself, is a giant corridor between the Mexican Sierra Madre to the south and the Rocky Mountains to the north. Bears, mountain J. Millican lions, deer, and smaller animals once freely crossed the region as part of their AAF volunteers replace and raise bottom strands of barbed continent-wide distribution. Fencing on the international border is a major wire to prevent fences from becoming barriers to pronghorn. barrier, though currently passages exist. Keeping the Sentinel Landscape’s wide open spaces abundant will help maintain plentiful wildlife. Occasional jaguar and ocelot sightings are testament to successful efforts to keep large swaths of natural landscape connected.

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Sentinel Landscape A electromagnetically19 quiet area for the Restoration Partnership. R D Vail U.S. Army’s Fort Huachuca Buffalo E L Soldier Electronic Test Range. The T T I Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape L Restoration Partnership conserves grasslands and forests that provide Davidson Canyon Wildlife Corridor habitat, water, livelihoods, and recreation in Cochise, Pima, and Santa Cochise Cruz counties, Arizona. 10 Stronghold Benson Sahuarita Corona De Tucson

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UNITED STATES / MEXICO BORDER