Name: With no help from the monsoon, state crews deliver water to wildlife
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With no help from the monsoon, state crews deliver water to wildlife

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Arizona RepublicView CommentsFrom&nbsp;Tuesday morning to Tuesday evening of the next week, Nate Solomon and his six-man crew are hauling water to places left dry by the lack of summer rains.Solomon is&nbsp;a wildlife habitat construction field crew supervisor and&nbsp;is in charge of the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s lone water hauling crew, which resupplies wildlife water catchments across the state. To reach the catchments in critical condition and in time, the crew often camps in the desert by the&nbsp;water trucks. They work eight days on and six days off.“Water hauling is more of a lifestyle than a job,” Solomon said. “And that’ll be our lifestyle until it rains.”Catchments are man-made watering facilities, which are built to be self-sustaining, refilling provided there is regular rain. The&nbsp;sites provide water to a wide range of wildlife during the drier seasons.The department manages roughly 3,000 catchments, two-thirds of which are in areas supervised&nbsp;by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. The has caused many of the&nbsp;catchments to reach critical conditions, meaning they’re close to drying up.“It’s becoming more and more severe this summer,” said Joe Currie, the head of the water development program for AZGFD, who has been with the department for 23 seasons. “This July was one of the hottest months I’ve ever seen and it looks like there is going to be no relief. It is by far one of the hottest summers I’ve seen.”The first catchments were used in Arizona in the mid-1940s. Wildlife departments have been building, maintaining and supplying them all over the state ever since.“As our cities and highways expanded we got into where wildlife lives, creating big barriers between wildlife and different water sources,” Currie said. “To mitigate that we started building these catchments because we don’t want to create areas in our state that are just devoid of wildlife because they couldn’t get to any water.”Currie says he’s seen dozens of species using the catchments, from lizards to eagles to bears.“You can find any animal that lives within Arizona drinking from these water catchments. If it lives in Arizona, it drinks from it,” Currie said. “We’re trying to work on stabilizing these animal populations so that we don’t have any wild fluctuations.”Since April, Solomon estimates his crew alone has delivered close to 400,000 gallons of water to the&nbsp;sites,&nbsp;significantly outpacing last year’s efforts.In 2019, the water hauling season was aided by a wetter monsoon season. From the end of May to August of last year, Solomon says his crew delivered approximately 350,000 gallons.“When super dry summers&nbsp;like this one&nbsp;hit there is just no way to keep up with the wildlife demand for water,” Currie said. “We’ve been trying to get out of the water hauling business&nbsp;because these catchments are meant to be self-sustaining and having to sustain them is really expensive.”Roughly $210,000 of the AZGFD’s budget is allocated solely for catchment preservation. Another $60,000 is spent keeping the department’s four trucks and three trailers moving.&nbsp;With a higher demand of water this summer, keeping the vehicles running has proven more difficult. According to Currie, two of the department’s water trucks are down with transmission issues, a problem he expects will cost close to $30,000 to fix.&nbsp;None of these expenses come from state general fund tax dollars. The agency operates primarily using revenue from the sale of licenses, permit tags, stamps and excise taxes on hunting and fishing gear.“We’re running on half of our equipment,” Solomon said. “If the monsoons come in, it’s still a lot of work but it’s not impossible. If the monsoons don’t come in, then it’s practically impossible to reach every catchment before it dries out. Especially if we don’t have all our vehicles. On top of that, a lot of the most critical catchments are really hard to get to because the roads are so tough.”To help Solomon’s crew supply remote catchment sites, the department has been contracting with Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters to airlift water to remote sites, as they have for the last two decades. So far, Currie has used helicopters on 10 different occasions this summer, which is more than he ever has&nbsp;since taking over in 2007. He says it costs roughly $10,000 to deliver approximately 2,500 gallons of water to&nbsp;the&nbsp;more mountainous sites, which are usually used by bighorn sheep.To aid with the program costs, the department has been asking for public donations through its . According to John Trierweiler, a public information officer for AZGFD, the campaign has raised approximately $45,000 since the start of June.“What we do is really rewarding and is so important because we’re helping sustain wildlife,” Solomon said. “We want these animals to be healthy and to be in these areas so we can keep Arizona’s diversity.”Anton L. Delgado is an environmental reporter for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Tell him about stories at anton.delgado@arizonarepublic.com. Follow his reporting on Twitter at @antonldelgado.Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at&nbsp;environment.azcentral.com&nbsp;and @azcenvironment&nbsp;on&nbsp;Facebook,&nbsp;Twitter&nbsp;and&nbsp;Instagram.View Comments

Arizona RepublicView CommentsFrom&nbsp;Tuesday morning to Tuesday evening of the next week, Nate Solomon and his six-man crew are hauling water to places left dry by the lack of summer rains.Solomon is&nbsp;a wildlife habitat construction field crew supervisor and&nbsp;is in charge of the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s lone water hauling crew, which resupplies wildlife water catchments across the state. To reach the catchments in critical condition and in time, the crew often camps in the desert by the&nbsp;water trucks. They work eight days on and six days off.“Water hauling is more of...

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With no help from the monsoon, state crews deliver water to wildlife

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