After University of Arizona Journalism student Hannah Cree attended the Save Our Saguaros Month Kickoff event to investigate the Tucson community’s efforts against the invasive species buffelgrass, we invited her to share the resulting story here on the Desert Diaries blog. Thank you to Hannah! By Hannah Cree with photos by Desert Museum staff It’s…
Category: Conservation
Why Pursue Conservation Work? A Personal Perspective
Ya-Ching Lin shares how climate disasters inspired her to pursue conservation work at the Desert Museum. Ya-Ching is the Museum’s GIS Analyst, working primarily on invasive species removal efforts. February 28th – March 4th is the National Invasive Species Awareness Week and the last week of Save Our Saguaros Month. Learn more about the campaign…
Weaving the Web of Life
Do you recall the grade school diagrams illustrating a simple food chain? This predator eats that prey and that prey eats plants, and plants obtain their energy from the sun and nutrients from soil. Arrows represent one organism eating another. Food chain diagrams help us visualize the flow of energy through an ecosystem. While the…
What Is Conservation Really About?
By Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction Join Michelle at the Desert Museum on Saturday, November 13, from 3:00 – 4:30 p.m. for a brief reading from Beloved Beasts, a lively discussion with renowned field ecologist and conservationist Harry Greene, and a book signing. Books will be available…
Beautiful Shiner Released into Wildlife Refuge
Arizona Native Fish, Beautiful Shiner, Released into San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge Visualize the Sonoran Desert and saguaros, rattlesnakes, and lizards might come to mind. But the region’s waterways contain an amazing aquatic universe! The desert’s native aquatic animals have adaptations allowing them to thrive in a unique environment, and are an essential link in…
When Problems Become Solutions
The Story of Rancho la Inmaculada We’ve got buffelgrass top of mind during Save Our Saguaros Month! We would normally be gathering large groups of volunteers to help beat back this invasive grass. This year we are taking a different approach in light of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re asking our community to participate…
A Fiery Future: Learning From the Bighorn Fire
The Bighorn Fire gave Tucson and other Arizona communities a glimpse of a fiery future, a future that has already become the norm in communities across the West.
INVASION! An Interview with Conservation Artist Rachel Ivanyi
See “INVASION!” by Rachel Ivanyi at the Baldwin Gallery at the Desert Museum through March 7, 2021, or tour the gallery virtually. In this show, Ivanyi explores the multi-dimensional forms and manifestations of invasion, from invasive thoughts to invasive species. While invasion is often presented as a negative, Ivanyi complicates how we perceive and talk…
2020 in Hindsight
2020 still looms large, and though we are looking forward to what 2021 will bring, we must acknowledge that the pandemic continues, too many individuals and families are still struggling to meet their basic needs, and businesses and organizations the world over have suffered severe and unprecedented financial loss. Thanks to the generous support of…
Junior Docents become Earth Camp Conservation Stewards
By Catherine Bartlett and Amy Orchard New challenges brought new opportunities for a cohort of teen volunteers at the Desert Museum. Due to COVID-19, in the spring of 2020 the Museum made the safe decision to pause all volunteer work which included having Junior Docents on grounds. The decision felt heartbreaking until the Education Team…
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