2014 SJV Awards Application
Riparian Habitat Management Guide – Tucson Audubon
Project Details
Project Need: Water is a precious resource in the dry landscape of Arizona. Healthy watercourses are
incredibly important to human quality of life and native biodiversity. Unfortunately there has been an
estimated 90% loss of such wet and lush habitat that existed before European settlement of Arizona.
What high quality riparian habitat remains, including rivers, streams, creeks and vegetated washes, are
in desperate need of preservation and degraded riparian systems need to be enhanced and restored.
The value of riparian systems to wildlife has been extensively studied. A few facts: US Geological
Survey (USGS) has determined that in Arizona over 80% of animals, including over 90% of native bird
species, utilize riparian habitat at some point in their lives (such as during migration.) Healthy riparian
habitat may contain up to 10 times as many individual birds as other adjacent habitat types. Riparian
areas serve as the required nesting area for 64% of our native songbird species.
Because much of Arizona’s remaining riparian habitat is located on private lands, private citizens have a
critical role in the conservation of our region’s unique biodiversity and sense of place. In turn, a healthy
and intact riparian system provides many benefits to the landowner. These include protecting their
property, and safeguarding and even increasing the monetary value of their land. As such many land
owners are willing to protect healthy riparian systems and enhance those that have been degraded. The
existing management guides are very technical, out-of-date or not specifically applicable to the habitats
of Arizona.
Many traditional practices such as channelization and seeding of exotic ground cover, while
implemented with the best intentions, have often resulted in degraded riparian habitat. There is a clear
need for a Riparian Habitat Management Guide that is easy to understand, practical to carry out,
sensitive to the landowner’s needs, and readily available in both a printed and digital form.
We will address this community need by determining the most effective and innovative techniques for
managing riparian areas for the benefit of landowners and wildlife, and getting this information in the
hands of landowners with riparian management responsibility. The project will draw on data from the
extensive Arizona Important Bird Areas database with over 10 years of riparian bird survey data and the
considerable wealth of Tucson Audubon staff expertise on restoration techniques. Once we have
determined these regionally-specific best practices they will be distilled into accessible step-by-step
instructions. The resulting booklet will be creatively formatted to be engaging and effective. We will
partner with a variety of stakeholder groups to distribute this free resource to landowners with riparian
habitat. A significant outcome of this project will be to solve the current problem of scarce, inaccessible
and overly technical information on methods for restoring Arizona’s riparian zones. Improved land
management practices in riparian areas at the landscape level is another important conservation impact.
Project Location: The original vision for this project was a booklet that provided information on how
land owners and land managers could implement best management practices state-wide in Arizona for
the benefit of their property value and functioning with the great secondary effect of protecting and
enhancing riparian habitats on their land. All the workshops and feedback and physical book distribution
outlined in this proposal would occur in Arizona.
The primary audience of this project are landowners and managers with management control over a
riparian zone on their property of any size. For example, within the Tucson region, we will target
housing developments and neighborhoods along the Santa Cruz River, Rillito River, Sabino Canyon,
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2014 SJV Awards Application
Riparian Habitat Management Guide – Tucson Audubon
Tanque Verde Wash and many other major washes. Our entire community will benefit from healthier
riparian systems.
Project Objectives and Outcomes:
1) Protect, maintain and increase riparian (including mesquite bosque) multi-story and single-story
habitat by 10% within the arid borderlands and improve conditions in riparian habitat for native
riparian birds in Mexican highlands habitats in Arizona using Bell’s Vireo, Summer Tanager and
Lucy’s Warbler data from comprehensive Important Bird Areas surveys over the next 10 years as
a measure of success.
a. The overall goal of this project is to protect existing privately-owned riparian habitat and
help landowners to enhance less than optimal riparian habitat for the benefit of native
birds such as Bell’s Vireo, Summer Tanager and Lucy’s Warbler. To achieve this goal we
will develop a guide to best management practices in riparian habitat (see next objectives
for more detail), conduct workshops with multiple instances of follow-through with
participants (see objective 4) and then use the existing, ongoing and extensive surveys
conducted by the Arizona IBA program to monitor the listed bird species of interest to
determine if there these species have benefited from restoration and management actions
implemented by landowners.
2) Clearly presenting the best management practices that a land owner or land manager can
implement to protect and improve the health of riparian habitat on their property.
a. Healthy riparian habitats are vital to the survival of many native wildlife species. These
systems also provide benefits to the landowner and for the overall landscape including:
reduction of damaging floodwater runoff; stabilized stream banks; sediment and nutrient
retention; reduction in chemical contaminate pollution; increased sub-surface water
storage and recharge; as well as providing quality habitat for native species. With all of
these incentives, a vast majority of landowners are willing, able, and motivated to act.
Yet currently, a significant barrier exists: the lack of available and accessible
management information. An intuitive how-to guide with practical, field-tested
techniques for effectively protecting and enhancing southern Arizona riparian zones is
needed.
3) Make the final version of the Riparian Habitat Management Guide available to all land owners
and managers (please note, this project is not aimed at birders) through free workshops where the
booklets are given, highlights of its contents are presented and their individual needs are
discussed.
a. Feed back from these land owners and managers will be collected via surveys before a
workshop begins, at the end of the workshops (to asses entering knowledge vrs exiting
knowledge) and at intervals after the workshops were attended using online resources
such as Survey Monkey. We will continue to stay in contact with workshop participants
and other interested land-owners via electronic newsletters (i.e. Constant Contat) and
answer situation specific questions concerning habitat if requested.
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2014 SJV Awards Application
Riparian Habitat Management Guide – Tucson Audubon
b. The workshops will be held at least in both Tucson and Phoenix (and likely other areas as
well within Arizona) and will be designed to include land owners and managers such as
ranchers. We will hold at least 4 free workshops with a goal of 100 participants total.
4) The feedback from workshop participants and comments from partners will be used to make
final edits and changes to the layout and content of the booklet which will be finalized and
printed (always available for free) and also made available in free digital download.
a. Tucson Audubon’s staff is well-equipped to successfully implement and complete this
project. The Restoration Biologist, Conservation Biologist and Habitats Manager on staff
are very qualified to analyze the various riparian habitat restoration techniques to
determine which would be the most effective for private landowners to implement in
southern Arizona. Other staff members will lend support in proofing the descriptions and
directions for the determined Best Management Practices to ensure they are written in an
accessible style and effective format without being overly technical. The final booklet
would be designed by a professional graphic artist with vast experience in creating
environmental education products in digital and printed form. These existing staff
members of Tucson Audubon bring knowledge, skills, and field experience to this project
to create the most effective resource possible and successfully complete this project.
5) Finalized Riparian Habitat Management Guide made widely available for free (both printed and
digital download version) to any and all land owners and managers.
a. Printed version will be distributed at Tucson Audubon, Audubon Arizona, Arizona Game
and Fish Offices and through other long-standing partners. Both digital versions will be
made available for free download on www.tucsonaudubon.org and www.aziba.org.
Methodology: There is a great need for riparian habitat within the Arid Borderlands region on private
land to be correctly managed by private landowners and managers. We will address this community
need by determining the most effective and innovative techniques for managing riparian areas for the
benefit of landowners and wildlife, and getting this information in the hands of landowners with riparian
management responsibility. The project will draw on data from the extensive Arizona Important Bird
Areas database with over 10 years of riparian bird survey data and the considerable wealth of Tucson
Audubon staff expertise on restoration techniques. Once we have determined these regionally-specific
best practices they will be distilled into accessible step-by-step instructions. The resulting booklet will
be creatively formatted to be engaging and effective. We will partner with a variety of stakeholder
groups to distribute this free resource to landowners with riparian habitat. A significant outcome of this
project will be to solve the current problem of scarce, inaccessible and overly technical information on
methods for restoring Arizona’s riparian zones. The second draft of this booklet is currently being
formatted in Jan-Feb 2014 and we will use this new version in free workshops for land owners and
managers and get their input on the booklet layout and methods outlined in its contents via surveys after
the workshops. Their comments and opinions will be used to create the final version of the booklet that
will be printed and widely distributed for free in both printed and digital versions.
Time Table: January 2014 – A first draft of this booklet was developed in 2013 and shared with
partners with considerable feedback received. The layout and content of the booklet has been
reorganized and should be reformatted during January 2014 and completed by the end of February 2014.
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2014 SJV Awards Application
Riparian Habitat Management Guide – Tucson Audubon
Species-specific recommendations for managing riparian habitat for birds of conservation concern are
being developed.
February 2014 – The new draft of the Riparian Habitat Management Guide will be widely shared with
experts and partners for opinions and edits.
March-December 2014 – At least 4 free workshops will be held where locally printed copies of the
booklet will be distributed, contents presented, individual land owners and managers situations and
needs discussed and most importantly, feedback in the form of surveys collected from participants. This
feedback will be used to edit the booklet to make it most useful to land owners and managers and a final
version will be created.
August 2015 – The finalized version of the booklet will be printed and bound. We envision a 40+ page
full-color resource guide.
August-December 2015 –Riparian Habitat Management Guides will be distributed free of charge to
Tucson area landowners and managers whose property contains riparian habitats. The booklet will be
made available at relevant community events and to HOAs and neighborhood associations throughout
the region. The digital version of the booklet will be incorporated into the Arizona’s Important Bird
Areas Program website (www.aziba.org) so as to be available at all times to anyone with an interest in
restoring riparian habitat.
Evaluation: The effectiveness of this project will be evaluated in several ways.
1) Workshop surveys: The participants of all workshops will be asked to fill out a survey before we
begin (to measure base-line knowledge) and at the end of the workshop (to evaluate how much
they learned). We will also follow-up with participants several times (likely 2 months after, 6
months, 1 year) using Survey Monkey to determine if they have implemented any of the
practices and record their success and challenges. For the design of these surveys and strategies
on how to best implement them we are planning on partnering with Sonoran Joint Venture to
increase the effectiveness of these surveys.
2) Booklets accessed: We will further measure the success of the booklet distribution through
tracking how many are printed and distributed and how many times the online version is
accessed via the internet.
3) The real measure of success for our ultimate goal of improving and maintaining muti-story
closed canopy riparian woodlands will come from ongoing Important Bird Areas surveys on
lands where the owners/managers have participated in the workshops and have the Riparian
Habitat Management Guide. While analyzing data in the future from these sites the species of
focus will be Bell’s Vireo, Lucy’s Warbler (especially for mesquite bosques) and Summer
Tanager. Our ultimate goal is see an increase of Bell’s Vireos numbers within 10 years.
- It should be noted that Arizona IBA and Tucson Audubon do already have access to
several model properties for these surveys and over 4 years of baseline data at this
time.
List of Partners: This project has many partners that will help the outcome of this project be successful.
The two main partners with Tucson Audubon in the creation of the contents and formatting of the
booklet are Audubon Arizona and Arizona Game and Fish, both of whom Tucson Audubon has a strong
working relationship on many projects. Partners that have already offered input into the contents and
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2014 SJV Awards Application
Riparian Habitat Management Guide – Tucson Audubon
organization of the booklet include: Sonoran Joint Venture, Point Blue, Sky Island Alliance, Arizona
Bird Conservation Initiative, and the University of Arizona. Potential partners that will be approached to
help review the final version of the booklet and distribute the booklet include: USFWS, Cattleman’s
Associations in Arizona, Homeowner’s Associations, San Pedro Working Group, The Nature
Conservancy and others.
Budget:
Budget Categories
SJV
Request
Applicant
Contribution
Project Coordinator TAS – Jennie
MacFarland (40 hrs @ $25/hr requested)
(75+ hrs provided by TAS)
Project Manager AudAZ – Tice Supplee
(40 hrs @ $25/hr requested (75+ hrs
provided by Audubon Arizona)
IBA Bird Survey Volunteers
640 hours @ $19/hr
Time to review the booklet from
partners including AZGFD, SJV – 40
collective hours @$30/hr
Design /Layout of booklet from graphic
artist 40hrs@$100/hr
Workshop Materials for 4 separate
workshops
Resources for long term project
participant evaluation – Survey Monkey
subscription, Constant Contact etc.
Printing of Riparian Habitat
Management Guide
Professional Binding of booklets
Total
$1,000
$2500
$1,000
Partner
Contribution
(monetary)
Partner
Contribution
(in-kind)
$3,500
$2500
$3,500
$12,160
$1200
$1,000
$3,000
$500
$500
Total
$12,160
$1,200
$4,000
$500
(AudAZ)
$1,500
$800
$800
$5,000
$5,000
$1,000
$7,000
$9,300
5
$4,200
$12,160
1,000
$32,660
2014 SJV Awards Application
Riparian Habitat Management Guide – Tucson Audubon
January 28, 2014
Subject: Riparian Habitat Management Guide Support
Please accept this letter as my strong endorsement and support for Tucson Audubon’s SJV grant
application for the Riparian Habitat Management Guide. Jennie MacFarland of TAS and I have been
working together from the beginning on this project and I have been involved in both the original ideas
behind its original concept and had major input into the reorganized version that I feel is a great
improvement.
I am committed to being a full partner in this project including the creation and refinement of the
booklet content, the organization and running of the workshops for landowners and the distribution of
the booklets themselves.
Jennie and I have collaborated successfully for over 2 years as co-coordinators for the Arizona
Important Bird Areas program and this is one more excellent project for us to work together as partners.
This project also fits perfectly with the Audubon 2012-2015 Strategic Plan conservation strategy to
create bird friendly communities. We have a unique challenge in our Arizona desert cities to persuade
homeowners and landowners to use best management practices in riparian zones. This project to
produce easy to read guide for landowners on how to best manage their riparian habitats for their own
property benefits and for wildlife fits within this goal. Further, Tucson Audubon Society is a lead group
for bird friendly community projects and programs and we are glad to be partnering on this project.
Should you need any further endorsement for this project please contact me.
Sincerely in Conservation,
Tice Supplee
Vashti “Tice” Supplee
Director of Bird Conservation
2008 Fellow
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