Why It Matters: Issues Affecting AZGFD
To retain existing customers and recruit new ones, the Department is focused on continuous improvement. Arizona Game and Fish must also be responsive to sometimes conflicting constituent desires, and must balance those desires with science-based management decisions and available financial resources.
Arizona has the highest wildlife diversity of any inland state (over 800 are native). Conserving and restoring wildlife diversity, on a landscape shared with humans, is fraught with controversy, legal implications and social barriers.
Some Department wildlife management programs focus on identifying threats and stressors and then reducing their effects. Ultimately, the Department aims to keep common species common and to conserve and restore imperiled species in the public trust.
To be successful, wildlife populations and their terrestrial and aquatic communities need to be managed in concert with the environment, watersheds and available water resources. As a community, game, sportfish and nongame wildlife are all dependent upon the quality and integrity of habitat; as such they must be managed in concert with each other as interrelated public trust resources.
Arizona’s human population continues to grow at a rate greater than the national average, which creates challenges for wildlife management and conservation including: loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat; land and water rights and use conflicts; introduction and expansion of invasive species; increased frequency and intensity of wildland fires; and increased recreation demands on the landscape.
Other challenges include long-term drought, wildlife diseases, predator-prey interactions, climate changes and invasive species. All of these factors may place further pressures on Arizona’s wildlife.
Firearm ownership and the demand for recreational shooting opportunities have increased, exceeding the current availability of shooting ranges in some areas of Arizona. Securing lands for new shooting ranges or maintaining existing ranges presents many challenges.
The Department also faces challenges tied to a change in water sports with the number of watercraft registered in Arizona declining while recreational paddlesports have increased. Non-motorized paddlesport craft do not require registration, whereas, registration fees support nearly all of the Department’s watercraft enforcement, administration and education efforts. The long-term drought has also affected boating recreation.