PHOENIX — It’s not easy, it costs a million dollars a year and it's a mission that dates back to the 1940s for Arizona Game and Fish; building catchments to provide drinking water for Arizona’s wildlife.
“They quickly learned as soon as they started building these things that all wildlife wanted a drink of water,” said Joseph Currie, Habitat Planning Program Manager for Arizona Game and Fish.
There are more than 3,000 catchments across the state and the average man-made water catchment is ten thousand gallons providing life-saving water all year long.
“They're just a facility that collects rainwater or precipitation," Currie said. "Whether that is rain or snow or snowmelt. Then it puts it into a storage tank and then off that storage tank is a drinking trough that allows the wildlife to come when they need to water."
And cameras mounted at the catchments have caught all kinds of creatures big and small.
“From bees to bighorn sheep, we’ve seen golden eagles and bald eagles. I’ve seen snakes and lizards, bobcats, elk just about any animal you can think of, they have been at the catchments,” said Currie.
The biggest need for water for wildlife is during our hot dry Arizona summers. A crew of five men from Game and Fish work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep the catchments maintained. But there is also a huge team of volunteers to help physically and financially.
“Our volunteers, our special interest groups, they do a crazy good job of helping us out, keeping these catchments with water for wildlife,” said Currie.
Some of the catchments do not have roads that lead to them and helicopters are used to fly water to them.
“We have to helicopter water in, there is just no way around it. Anytime we fly water you know on the average if we fly like 4000 gallons to a catchment, it's going to cost us 10 to 15,000 dollars each time. If we have to haul water to a site with a truck that cost a thousand dollars each time and that doesn’t count the wear and tear on the vehicle,” said Currie.
Most catchments were built in the 1940s.
“They're old and they're small, and they're not built to deal with the dry weather we have now. Back then it was a lot wetter. We had better monsoons and wetter winters, “said Currie.
Arizona Game and Fish are now in the process of rebuilding the catchments to be larger and more efficient, so they don’t have to haul water to them.
“We manage 800 different species across this state and having these watch catchments is critical to keeping them safe,” said Currie.
