News

We had the Wilderness volunteers, Friends group members and BANWR maintenance working on the Arivaca creek trail. Collectively we put in over 350 hours of improvements to the trail and built a ramada shade structure. The trail had severely eroded walkways, tripping hazards and fallen trees. We repaired the walkways with a combination of ladder stepping logs with backfilling to create steps and to divert water from the downslopes. Rock was brought in to create better tread and rock dams on smaller declines. Our seasonal Volunteers repaired and painted the kiosk, rebuilt benches, and did vegetation clearing. I am very […]

Dirty Freehub is working on more gravel bike route guides for BANWR. Check out this route and https://dirtyfreehub.org/routes/arizona/buenos-aires/

The Arizona Game and Fish Department released 30 pronghorn antelopes into a field of grass about 65 miles southwest of Tucson on Tuesday to beef up the population at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The new additions will more than double the size of the existing herd, which numbered at about two dozen animals after years of trying to reestablish the once-common species there. “There used to be hundreds of them in the Altar Valley” before the native population died out, said Game and Fish spokesman Mark Hart. The five bucks and 25 does set free on Tuesday were collected […]

There is always more work to do than the Refuge staff can accomplish so they welcome help from the Friends and other willing helpers. Volunteers take down un-needed ranch fence that can injure and trap wildlife, repair boundary fence to keep cattle off the refuge, clean up trash, help with habitat work, work at the Visitor’s Center, provide environmental education programs to children at schools, libraries and at the Refuge and help with other work to support the Mission of the refuge. Our volunteers have developed a special bond with the refuge and you notice this when you talk with […]

Every year Buenos Aires NWR participates in the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, a nationwide bird census which is the oldest avian database in the world.  Participants count all bird species and numbers seen within one day. Save the date for this year – Thursday December 15!  Birders and nonbirders are welcome.  Contact [email protected] for information or to sign up.  You don’t have to be a birder.  We welcome anyone who wants to spend a day outdoors enjoying wide open spaces of grassland or in riparian areas with towering cottonwoods. The count for December 2021 tallied a total of […]

The Masked Bobwhite Quail sits at the edge of extinction. Hannah Pierce works at The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, established primarily to reintroduce the Masked Bobwhite into the wild.

Wilderness Volunteers (WV) is an organization that prides itself on “giving back” to public lands. They have come to BANWR five times and counting to help remove barbed wire fence and other projects. In March 2022, the group asked Hannah Pierce for her wish list and she mentioned putting a wire mesh over five of her flight pens for the Endangered Masked Bobwhite Quails. Since these five pens only had cloth sunscreen over them, the Ravens picked at it to create openings through which they hoped they could enter and have quail for lunch. Quail interns would repair the holes […]

The folks at Dirty Freehub, a group dedicated to bicycling on gravel and dirt roads virtually stopped by to interview Reta Rutledge about riding the roads on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. We have over 200 miles of dirt roads on the refuge, just the right challenge for gravel riders. Here is the podcast. They have also created several routes on the refuge and in the adjoining Nogales District of the Coronado National Forest. The details of the 35 mile Buenos Aires route can be found HERE. The details of the 46 mile Buenos Aires – Arivaca route can […]

By Reta Rutledge LUSH Cosmetics gave the Friends a grant that included money to hire a contractor, Kyle Thompson. Kyle led and trained 7 volunteers from Wilderness Volunteers to install 17 mesquite erosion control structures in three areas of the refuge. The structures slow the water during flood events in these eroded washes, cause sediment to drop instead of washing away and create fertile ground for new vegetation to grow. This keeps water on the land where it soaks into the soil. Thank you LUSH for supporting this important work.