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Coalition, landowners and federal staff press forward on Santa Cruz River national wildlife refuge
Summary
Presenters told the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors a multi‑year effort to establish a Santa Cruz River national wildlife refuge has advanced into a Fish and Wildlife Service land protection planning phase after local studies, landowner interest and a federal planning grant.
Luke Cole, director of the Santa Cruz River program at the Sonoran Institute, told the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on March 11 that work to establish a Santa Cruz River national wildlife refuge has moved into a federal land protection planning phase.
“Now there are Fish and Wildlife Service staff specifically working on this project,” Cole said, describing a process the coalition has pursued for nearly five years and calling the river corridor “a vital and rare wildlife corridor.”
The presentation summarized why coalition members say the corridor qualifies as a refuge: about 15 flowing miles in Santa Cruz County sustained by upgraded wastewater treatment plants, connected north–south migration routes for wildlife, and habitat for species of conservation concern. Cole said the coalition has submitted a landscape conservation design and that the Fish and Wildlife…
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