Tonto National Forest, AZ

Cave Creek, only twenty-five miles north of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, is one of the few perennial streams in the Upper Sonoran Desert. Cottonwood, willow, sycamore, and ash trees as well as bulrushes and cattails grow in this riparian area, in sharp contrast to the arid uplands of the watershed. The Conservation Fund partnered with the landowners and the U. S. Forest Service to add twenty-eight acres of this oasis to the Tonto National Forest, including areas where Hohokam people lived about 800 years ago.

For financing, the team tapped a little known-federal land conservation program, the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act of 2000. Under this act, the Bureau of Land Management can sell hard-to-manage parcels of public land and lands with significant residential or commercial value, to generate funds to support land conservation. Across the West, this resource promises to extend land conservation's horizon.