When U of A ecologist Michael Bogan leads local school groups to spots along the Santa Cruz River to learn about desert aquatic wildlife, it's a new experience for most attendees – including bus drivers and chaperones.

"They leave realizing that Tucson has a river, that there's wildlife, and that it's a spot they can come back to and enjoy with their families," said Bogan, an associate professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment who has studied the river's ecology for over a decade. He runs a National Science Foundation-funded Biological Research Experience for Teachers Site on the Santa Cruz.

The idea of Tucson as a river city wasn't always so novel, Bogan added. The O'odham and Yaqui relied on the Santa Cruz for millennia. And well into the 19th century, spring in Tucson could be marked by the chirping of leopard frogs inviting local kids to come fish.

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"That river culture was Tucson," Bogan said, but it all but evaporated with urban development by the 1970s. "We've had three or four generations of people who grew up thinking Tucson was not a river city, so a lot of people have lost that connection."

A local effort, which Bogan and other U of A experts are helping guide with dozens of community partners, aims to rebuild Southern Arizona's connection to the Santa Cruz. The coalition aims to have small portions of a 90-mile stretch of the river, from the U.S.-Mexico border north to the Pima-Pinal county line, added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Refuge System.

A $600,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will support that effort.

The designation would provide federal support to preserve the river's ecology and support community efforts to plan for the river's sustainability amid climate change and population growth. The funding will allow the coalition, which has gathered ecological data and held community workshops, to formalize its plan to revitalize the river and strengthen community connections so that its thousands of species can coexist with the roughly 1 million people who live in the proposed area. 

"This is an opportunity for communities to be part of thinking about what type of relationship they want to have with the river," said Mackenzie Waller, an assistant professor of landscape architecture in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture and the principal investigator for the new grant. "The university has a role to be a really good partner and provide all of this knowledge that can be paired really nicely with the community knowledge, the traditional ecological knowledge that's already here in place for us."

If added to the National Wildlife Refuge System, the area would join a small group of urban national wildlife refuges in the Southwest and be the first in Arizona.

The coalition behind the national designation includes leaders and representatives from the City of Tucson, Pima County, the Wilderness Society, the Tucson Audubon Society, the Sonoran Institute, the Tucson Birthplace Open Space Coalition, neighborhood associations, local residents and more. 

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After years of work on the river, Bogan was naturally absorbed into the network and has helped connect others with shared missions to preserve the Santa Cruz. As an ecologist, he sees the Santa Cruz as the "last refuge" in a drying climate for species unique to Arizona, including the tiny Gila topminnow fish and the Sonoran mud turtle.

In 2020, Bogan and collaborators from the city, state and federal government, plus the nonprofit Sonoran Institute, brought hundreds of Gila topminnow from the Santa Cruz in the Nogales area to reestablish a population in the river near downtown Tucson. The fish count has since exploded and the population has a stable habitat.

The river is also a major migration corridor for many birds, making the area an established birding capital that could grow into a larger ecotourism destination, Waller said. 

The funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will formalize these efforts and others to sustain the river's ecology and make it a bigger focal point for Southern Arizona.

Waller, who joined the U of A in 2021 from the University of Washington, said the project ultimately aims to bring people together around a common idea she heard when she arrived in Tucson.

"Everyone I've met in Tucson talks about how water is life. And in the moments in which it's cared for and treated the way it should be, the river is a gathering point," Waller said. "This project is about bringing more people together and including everybody who's interested in this work."