McAllen couple donates ranchland to help ocelots

The Monitor
July 27, 2014
Paula Ann Solis

The border fence running between Mexico and Texas has inadvertently blocked and damaged the Rio Grande Valley range of ocelots.

Urbanization and political boundaries pose a danger to this endangered cat and the future of wildlife. But a McAllen family has breathed new life into their survival by placing part of their land in the hands of an interested party, the United States government.
 Celebrated land stewards Karen and Phil Hunke worked for more than a decade to transform thousands of acres in Hidalgo County, known as Tecolote Ranch, into a sanctuary for endangered plants and animals such as the ocelot.
 In the Valley, where 95 percent of original Texas brush land has been cleared in the name of progress, their efforts are uncommon.
 “Karen and I are just really committed to helping people learn and educating them about how you can conserve land and not over graze,” Hunke said. “You can aid wildlife at the same time and have cattle and make it work together.”
 The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group, took note of their commitment and successful maintenance of critical land during land inventories, Hunke said.
 To take their progress one step further, the Hunkes sold 1,119 acres in June to the conservancy at a significantly reduced price, cutting their overall land value. But it was all in the name of nature and charity, Hunke said.
 The land is near the intersection of Willacy, Hidalgo and Kenedy counties.
 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the land for $3 million with funds the Department of Homeland Security reserved to combat the negative impacts of the border fence’s construction.

http://m.themonitor.com/news/local/mcallen-couple-donates-ranchland-to-help-ocelots/article_3afde3fa-1525-11e4-8c8c-001a4bcf6878.html?mode=jqm

Southern Ariz. community helps populate Coronado Memorial with agave plants

Sierra Vista Herald
August 25, 2011
by Jacob Petersen

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — After the construction of the border wall resulted in the death of thousands of agave plants, there was concern among many at the Coronado National Memorial for the lesser long-nosed bat species, which use agave nectar as food.

It was thought replacing the lost agave plants would fix the problem for the bats, which use the park as a foraging area while traveling between South America in the winter and the Southern U.S. in the summer.

Mother Nature, however, had different plans, killing half of the 1,600 agave plants planted last year by freezing them in February. Not to be outdone by ice, flames killed half again as the Monument Fire tore through in June.

But the volunteers who helped lay the groundwork last year brought along some friends this year, as more than 120 people crowded a parking lot at the entrance of the memorial on a recent Saturday morning intent on outdoing the damage done by both man and Mother Nature.

In its second of five years, the Agave Restoration Project was in full swing as more than a half dozen park rangers, biologists and specialists led the team in planting nearly 1,100 agave plants.

"I'm very pleased," said Dean Schlicting with a huge smile. A biologist with the National Park Service, Schlicting recently inherited command of the project due to his expertise in area plants and experience with another project regarding agave plants of Fort Huachuca.

The Coronado Memorial project, he said, was designed "to mitigate the loss of agave during the construction of the border fence and the fire."

But it is not only the lesser long-nosed bats that would be affected if it weren't for the volunteers, Schlicting said.

"They are a keystone species," he said of the bats. "They pollinate the crops. It is a very important piece of the system."

Arriving between 7 and 7:30 a.m., the volunteers were given a briefing on the purpose of the project before getting a short talk by Dr. Joel Diamond, a contractor with Arizona Fish and Game, about the bats they would be helping.

Following a safety lecture and a few minutes spent organizing into teams, the volunteers set out, digging a shallow hole before planting the inch-tall plants and covering them with chicken wire to keep the animals out.

For Bob Scott and his three grandkids, Chase Archer, 7, Even Archer, 11, and Anthony Wagner, 13, the project offered a "chance to get the kids off the computer and out of the house," Scott said.

Scott, who lives near the Mesquite Tree restaurant and was evacuated during the Monument Fire, also encouraged a number of colleagues from his work to come along and was happy to do anything he could to help the recovery effort.

"They weren't too happy when they had to go to bed early," he said of his grandkids with a smile. "But I haven't heard them complain. They're doing good."

With hundreds of chicken wire domes covering a wide swath of land near the mouth of the park, the only issue volunteers really faced was the ability to transport water for the plants as fast as they were being planted.

"Water!" was the common call of the day as the sun got higher and volunteers, making quick work of the task at hand, needed but a final boost to get their plants ready to grow.

"Are we out of plants?" asked one park ranger as another pointed in multihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifple directions and mumbled something about running low.

With only 700 plants in the ground by noon on planting day last year, many of those in charge were stunned to be nearly finished with 1,100 plants by 9:30 a.m.

When asked what he thought about the situation, Schelicting, who only moments later seemed a bit concerned at the influx of radio calls, was obviously happy.

"We are very excited about that," he said of the success.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/a9552bfc94b246b6aab599109d58ecea/AZ--Agave-Project/

$7M set for border habitat work

Arizona Daily Star
October 31, 2010
by Tony Davis

Federal money for jaguars and bats - or people?

That's the question ranching advocates raised after the federal government announced details for spending nearly $7 million to restore borderlands damaged by construction of the border fence.

From environmentalists and a public preserve manager came this answer: The feds have spent billions on border fences real and virtual, and it's about time to spend tens of millions protecting animals and plants.

In the next few years, authorities will spend the money to develop jaguar management plans, scan remote camera photos for the cats, close dirt roads and restore wetlands along the border. They'll reseed worn soils, monitor fish populations, build a fish barrier, count bat roosts and study bat movements, and plant agaves.

These actions are in the first leg of a $52 million federal program designed to compensate for damage to endangered species habitat on public lands by the border fence and other security measures.

Land managers and environmentalists called the money a good start, but some borderlands ranchers and their spokesmen in the Arizona Cattlemen's Association were less receptive. The association issued a news release titled "Jaguar Receives Green Card," saying the money should protect people first.

Six months after the still-unsolved slaying of Cochise County rancher Robert Krentz, "ranchers and residents south of Interstates 10 and 8 continue to live in a lawless region controlled by drug cartels," the release said. "These drug cartels continue to disrupt everyday life for rural residents along Southern Arizona's border. Yet ranchers are not receiving funds to restore our habitat, nor is the Administration working to restore our border. . . . We have a serious situation on our southern border, and ranchers continue to see the degradation of their environment and traffic from drug cartels."

Federal money for the wildlands will address impacts of a border fence built with no environmental reviews, countered Organ Pipe National Monument Superintendent Lee Baiza. As for competition with border security, Baiza said the $50 million is a small amount compared to $600 million Congress agreed in August to spend on Border Patrol agents, customs inspectors and other law enforcement officials, as well as communications equipment and unmanned aerial "drones" to monitor border activities.

The $6.8 million will pay for eight Southwestern projects, six in Arizona. A list of 29 projects identified as feasible for the entire $52 million includes 17 Arizona projects estimated to cost $14.3 million.

The projects are "an absolute joke" because they don't address non-endangered species such as mountain lion, deer and javelina that live in his area but can't get over the border wall, complained rancher John Ladd, who lives near the border wall near the San Pedro River. There's no jaguar or ocelots in that area - but they do exist in areas east of Douglas and west of Sasabe where there is no wall, he said.

"My family has been here since 1896, but we were willing to accept the consequences of the wall if the government had stopped illegal immigration. They haven't done it," Ladd said. "They won't patrol the border, and they can't get Congress to reform the immigration law."

Ladd has a point in that these projects won't help mountain lions get across the wall, said Matt Clark of Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson. But much of the new money will be spent where the Fish and Wildlife Service thinks it can get the most endangered-species conservation for the money, he said.

"The service is not looking at where we can make the border wall better. They are looking at where we can make an investment that furthers the conservation of these species," Clark said. "If you were to calculate the acreages lost to the border wall and roads on private and public lands, then you would be looking at well over $50 million to mitigate it. This is a down payment."

Reese Woodling, a retired rancher near Douglas who still sits on the governing board of the Malpais Borderlands ranching group, said he sees the jaguar monitoring as pointless because with no female jaguars seen in Southern Arizona for decades, he doubts the animal can survive as a viable population here anymore.

"They are just throwing money at these programs," said Wendy Glenn, a rancher in the Malpais Borderlands area east of Douglas. "It's a tough call for me to criticize them, but I don't know how they can spend so much on this when so many other things are needed."

Interior Department Assistant Secretary Rhea Suh, however, called the programs a first step toward meeting the government's responsibility to compensate for the impact on wildlife from the continuing effort to secure the border.

This debate could continue if more types of restoration projects come on line, as is hinted at by the agreement between Interior and DHS. It lays out five other classes of natural resources that could get restoration work beyond the $52 million: for non-endangered wildlife, wetlands and riverfront area, soils and cultural resources, including Native American human remains.

But a cautionary note about the restoration plans also came from another federal document on the Organ Pipe project. It said that unsafe conditions on the borderlands may prevent people from working in the area where most of the restoration work is needed.

On StarNet: Find extensive coverage of immigration issues at azstarnet.com/border

Areas where the wildlands-Restoration funding will be spent

Six initial projects are in Arizona:

• $2.1 million to survey and monitor jaguars for four years, develop a jaguar management plan, fence and restore jaguar habitat and work with ranchers, government and local communities to develop a system to report on jaguars.

• $1.9 million to protect, inventory and monitor endangered lesser long-nosed bat and Mexican long-nosed bat roosts. This involves finding roosts along fence segments from the Patagonia to the Huachuca Mountains and from the Perilla to Peloncillo mountains. It also involves radio-tracking bats in these areas to help find the roosts and to determine how much roads, fences, lights and other facilities act as barriers for bats.

• $980,000 to restore 84 acres damaged by construction of 5.2 miles of fence near Lukeville. This involves closing roads and allowing vegetation to regrow, replanting 200 large transplanted saguaro and organ pipe cacti, seed collecting and propagation, road decompaction, erosion control, planting and invasive species control.

• $657,000 to restore 49.7 acres at the San Bernardino National Wildlife refuge, east of Douglas. It will compensate for the loss of 16 miles of habitat and about 116 acres of roadbed for border fencing and other security measures.

• $441,250 to study four federally protected Rio Yaqui fish species and four sensitive fish species living in that refuge. The work includes an inventory of the fish and an accounting of impacts from unpaved roads, disturbed soils and soil erosion. A shallow well will be drilled to ensure permanent water for a wetland for the fish and the imperiled San Bernardino Springsnail. A fish barrier will be installed to keep exotic fish out of the refuge.

• $274,873 to plant 6,344 agaves at Coronado National Memorial to compensate for removal of 3,172 agaves for fence construction.

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_e2f4eb0f-6ade-5974-9c94-b39f9954fd3a.html

Departments of the Interior, Homeland Security Announce $6.8 Million in Conservation Projects

Department of the Interior Press Release
October 13, 2010

Washington, DC – The U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have completed the first InterAgency Agreement under the 2009 Memorandum of Agreement to fund environmental mitigation projects that will benefit several species of fish and wildlife affected by border security projects in the Southwest. Signed September 28, the agreement will fund $6.8 million in projects and represents the first of a series of efforts designed to mitigate impacts from the construction of fencing and other security measures along the U.S. Border with Mexico.

“CBP is committed to protecting our country’s natural resources and wildlife while performing our security mission,” said CBP Deputy Commissioner, David Aguilar. “CBP is responsible for sound environmental stewardship and energy conservation as an integral part of their mission activities.”

“The projects we are announcing today are, in effect, part of a down payment on mitigating the impact on wildlife and its habitat from the on-going effort to secure our southern border,” Assistant Secretary Rhea Suh said. “In the future, we will continue to work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to fund new projects that ensure threatened and endangered species and other wildlife along the border are conserved and the fragile ecosystems they depend upon are protected.”

The initial mitigation projects include funding to restore habitat for lesser long-nosed bats in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona; re-establish the Aplomado falcon in New Mexico; install a fish barrier at San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona to preclude competition with invasive species; study movement of bighorn sheep in California; survey and monitor jaguars and their habitat in Arizona.

Customs and Border Protection is funding these projects under a 2009 Memorandum of Agreement between CBP and the Department of the Interior for mitigation of unavoidable impacts to natural and cultural resources due to construction of border security infrastructure. Under this agreement, CBP will fund DOI up to $50 million over the next few years for mitigation needs.

Over the past three years, CBP has constructed about 670 miles of fence along the southwest border as an integral part of the nation’s strategy to improve border security. CBP has committed to responsible environmental stewardship throughout the life-cycle of the tactical infrastructure, from construction through operations and maintenance.


The First Mitigation Projects:
a. Sasabe Biological Opinion Arizona
$2,119,000

b. Organ Pipe Cactus NM Biological Opinion Arizona
$980,000

c. San Bernardino Valley Mitigation Arizona
$657,480

d. Rio Yaqui Fish Studies Arizona
$441,250

e. Peninsular Bighorn Sheep Study California
$230,000

f. Coronado NM Agave Restoration Arizona
$274,873

g. Northern Aplomado Falcon Reintroduction and Habitat Restoration New Mexico $499,700

h. Border-wide Bat Conservation Arizona
$925,000


http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Departments-of-the-Interior-and-Homeland-Security-Announce-6-point-8-Million-in-Conservation-Projects.cfm