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September 4th, 2024 Dear Friend of the AWF, It’s been an exciting and busy year around the AWF campfire! This year we launched an ambitious outdoor recreation and conservation education program: “All Afield with AWF!” We recognize that to truly protect Arizona’s wildlife and wild places far into the future, many more Arizonans need to learn to appreciate and love the great outdoors. Our All Afield programs introduce women and youth and families to Arizona’s mountains, deserts, and grasslands. And by doing so, we’re fueling the passion of Arizona’s future conservationists. At the Arizona legislative session for 2024, we witnessed a barrage of bad bills intended to weaken the protections of our public lands. Legislation was introduced that infringed on the rights of private property owners, called for the elimination of protections for the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, and sought to transfer federal lands to the state where they could ultimately be sold to the highest bidder. Whew! AWF showed up and spoke up, with you by our side – in person, and in numbers. We need to build a future where this is always the case. Our approach to education is not so different from our approach to advocacy. We want to see EVERYONE at the AWF campfire. When we gather at the capitol in Phoenix to meet with legislators for our annual Camo at the Capitol, we and our affiliates make the capitol “campfire” inviting by bringing venison barbacoa tacos, spicy bowls of elk chile, and mesquite flour cookies. And when we invite families and youth to participate in our new Families Afield and Youth Afield programs, or recruit young women to participate in our nationally recognized Bridges to BOW (B2B) programs, we make sure that campfire is welcoming also, by providing experienced educators and the necessary gear–sleeping bags, backpacks, and headlamps–to make their experience one that will lead to a lifetime of appreciation and giving back to the outdoors! This community campfire is our best version of AWF, and we need YOU by our side to realize it… We depend upon YOUR support to fulfill our goals…year after year! During the upcoming fiscal year, AWF will celebrate the 30th anniversary of our innovative and impactful Becoming an Outdoors-Woman (BOW) weekend workshop – 30 years during which thousands of women have come together to hike, fish, bird, hunt, dress game, tie knots, rappel steep rock faces, learn gun safety, and build community. With our new “All Afield With AWF!” outdoor recreation and conservation education programs we are building upon BOW’s legacy of getting EVERYONE into the outdoors in the most meaningful ways. At the very same time, our advocacy program is doing what it does best: gathering outdoor enthusiasts from around the state and helping them champion the incredible riches of Arizona’s wildlife and public lands. AWF also celebrates our public lands by rolling up our sleeves and doing restoration work on the ground. We partnered with the ApacheSitgreaves National Forest on trail work, the Sonoran Desert National Monument on barbed wire fence removal, and we contributed $7,500 toward projects like Valley of the Sun Quail Forever’s seeding of 10 acres of public land with native seeds for annual and perennial plants that support our threatened pollinators. Public lands are the beating heart of our Arizona way of life – and a renewable resource critical to our economy. You helped us defend them this year through action alerts and testimony at the capitol.
We need YOUR continued support! Finally, we hope you are enjoying and benefiting from the expansion of and improvements to our communications and publications program this past year. Our quarterly magazine, vibrant podcasts, twice monthly E-News, daily social media posts, regular blogs, and website are a concerted effort to educate and engage Arizonans, just like you and me. At AWF, our goal is to bring people together around the campfire–first to simply enjoy, then to educate and give back, and finally to advocate for Arizona’s wildlife and wild places. We hope you recognize the progress we’ve made, and we hope you’ll help us keep the campfire burning!
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Wildlife corridors and the protection of large connected areas of forests, deserts, grasslands, and wetlands are critical to wildlife conservation, in Arizona and across the American West. That’s why connectivity is one of the conservation issues AWF champions when meeting with Arizona’s congressional delegation, state and federal government agency leaders and state elected officials. AWF is a long-time champion of federal funding for wildlife friendly transportation infrastructure and statewide wildlife migration policies for challenges as important and complex as solar energy siting and transmission. All Afield With AWF! includes two annual field trips to the grasslands of southern Arizona and the forests of northern Arizona where we are convening and educating precisely those decisionmakers who will make or break the healthy habitats that support Arizona’s wealth of big game animals and other wildlife, large and small. AWF is here to protect wildlife and everyone’s access to the fishing, hunting, hiking, camping, and wildlife watching at the heart of the Arizona experience. 
Our fall and spring Youth Afield programs will train high school to college-age youth as paid interns to guide middle-school students from diverse communities on outings themed for ecology and conservation in a variety of Arizona ecosystems.
When we can’t take people into the field, we bring the best of the field to them. What better way to help legislators understand the bounty of our public lands than to feed them at our annual Camo at the Capitol event with delicious game harvested there – just as we feed their minds with the conservation knowledge they need to make good choices for Arizona’s wildlife and wild places. |
Impact Reports
Annually as the Arizona Wildlife Federation wraps up our fiscal year on June 30, we reflect on the impact we’ve had on Arizona wildlife and wildlands conservation. Our advocacy, education, and engagement programming are only possible with your generous support.
Thank you for helping us to achieve these accomplishments.
| Arizona Wildlife Federation PO Box 1182, Mesa, AZ 85211 The Arizona Wildlife Federation is a Registered 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization. EIN# 86-0076994 |
