The past several years have seen exciting advances in wildlife linkage planning throughout Arizona. Two of the major efforts since 2004 have been the Arizona Wildlife Linkages Workgroup and the Arizona Missing Linkages project.

Arizona Wildlife Linkages Workgroup

Following an initial workshop at the Phoenix Zoo in April 2004, nine public agencies and nonprofit organizations, including AZGFD, ADOT, FHWA, USFS, BLM, NAU, Sky Island Alliance, and the Wildlands Project initiated a collaborative effort to proactively address wildlife connectivity in Arizona. They identified and mapped large blocks of protected habitat threatened by fragmentation and prioritized areas for further study. Their report, Arizona's Wildlife Linkages Assessment, can be downloaded from ADOT's website.

Arizona Missing Linkages

Funded by Arizona Game & Fish Department, our team of conservation biologists and GIS Analysts at Northern Arizona University are creating detailed linkage designs for 16 priority areas highlighted in the Wildlife Linkages Assesment. These plans identify and map multi-species corridors that will best maintain wildlife movement between wildland blocks, as well as highlight specific planning and road mitigation measures required to maintain connectivity in these corridors.

Note: The linkage design reports are in compressed PDF format for faster download. Unfortunately, the compression occasionally makes small text on maps within the report difficult to read. If you would like a high-resolution PDF or PNG copy of any of the maps, please contact us. Each linkage design is also provided in ESRI shapefile format.

2008 Linkage Design Reports