Nina Mason Pulliam was passionate about the outdoors and natural places of both Arizona and Indiana. She was born and raised in the rural Martinsville area in south central Indiana, an area known for its rolling hills and spectacular fall colors, but she equally appreciated the desert and vast open spaces of Arizona. In fact, she visited the Grand Canyon at least 75 times during her lifetime. Her charitable giving reflected her fondness for nature and the Trust continues her legacy by funding organizations that preserve and protect the environment.

Although a new focus of the Trust's environmental funding is on education, many of the organizations awarded grants concentrate their efforts on protecting, conserving and/or restoring habitats and various threatened or endangered species of wildlife.

A critical component the Trust considers when making decisions on its environmental grants is the extent of collaboration involved in a project. The majority of the Trust's environmental grant recipients are successful because they have built strong collaborations (partnerships and alliances) with community organizations, environmental groups, government agencies and/or corporations.

Following are examples of Trust grantees that are working to protect habitats and wildlife in Arizona and Indiana through collaboration.

Programs Protecting Habitat

Sycamore Land Trust, Bloomington, Indiana

The mission of the Sycamore Land Trust (SLT) is to preserve the landscape of south central Indiana, providing habitat for wildlife, protecting scenic beauty and offering places for outdoor enjoyment and education. It has helped to protect 3,451 acres in seven counties with animal and plant habitats, including those with threatened and endangered species.

Last year, SLT received a two-year $90,000 grant to hire an outreach assistant/project manager to increase the organization's community outreach and public awareness abilities, enhance its educational offerings, and encourage more people to enjoy the aesthetic, educational and recreational benefits of SLT's preserves.

One of the organization's major habitat restoration projects is the Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve, a wetlands protected by SLT, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and an adjacent private landowner. The combined area, west of Bloomington, consists of nearly 700 acres, 350 of which are a state-designated nature preserve. Many funding partners helped purchase the Preserve, including individuals, foundations and the Indiana Heritage Trust program with dollars generated from Indiana's environmental license plates.

Hikes through the Preserve offer visitors a look at high-quality bottomland, hardwood forest, restored prairie and two great blue heron rookeries. It is also home to a pair of bald eagles, one of only three pair in Monroe County. Other wildlife include beaver, woodcocks and many varieties of warblers. Recently, researchers from Indiana University collaborated with SLT to study the rare Kirtland's snake found at Beanblossom Bottoms.

The Preserve's program and funding partners worked quickly to preserve a part of south central Indiana's scenic landscape, including the wildlife that depend upon the area's habitat in order to survive.

For more information about the Sycamore Land Trust, call 812-336-5382 or visit www.sycamorelandtrust.org

Grand Canyon Trust, northern Arizona

The Grand Canyon Trust (GCT) is dedicated to protecting and restoring the 130,000-square-mile Colorado Plateau, including its spectacular landscapes, flowing rivers, clean air, and diversity of plants and animals. The Colorado Plateau holds the world's largest concentration of protected landscapes, consisting of 26 wilderness areas and 29 national parks and monuments. GCT advocates collaborative, common-sense solutions to achieve its objectives.

Trust support of GCT began in 2000 and continues today with a two-year grant of $200,000 to establish conservation management for nearly 900,000 acres of land within the Colorado Plateau. The area borders Grand Canyon National Park (nearly 100 miles) and the north Kaibab National Forest, and contains the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Paria Plateau and other notable places. Through a collaborative agreement with the Conservation Fund, GCT raised $4.5 million to purchase two crucial properties, the Kane and Two Mile cattle ranches. The ranches include over 1,000 acres of private land on the Paria Plateau, below the Vermilion Cliffs and in House Rock Valley. Federal and state grazing permits are tied to the 900,000 acres through the ranches, which GCT will control with the purchase. The Conservation Fund is a national organization that helps local, state and federal agencies and nonprofit organizations acquire property from willing sellers to protect open space, wildlife habitat, public recreation areas, river corridors and historic places. The Conservation Fund provided approximately one-third of the $4.5 million purchase price.

The Grand Canyon Trust and its partner formed the collaboration to restore the plant and animal communities to their natural condition, an ambitious goal that will take many years to accomplish. The land contains the highest density of remaining old-growth ponderosa pines in the southwest, the greatest concentration of the imperiled northern goshawk and is the only place in the world to find the Kaibab squirrel. North Canyon, a feeder to the Colorado River on the ranch, has the purest remaining strain of endangered Apache trout and the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument is the epicenter for re-introduction of the endangered California condor in Arizona. Reaching the goal will require the help of additional partners, such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the United States Forest Service, local residents, scientists, conservationists and volunteers.

For more information about the Grand Canyon Trust, call 928-774-7488 or visit www.grandcanyontrust.org

Sky Island Alliance and Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, southern and northern Arizona

Although these organizations work autonomously in different areas of the state, they share a common goal of collaborative conservation planning and forest restoration.

Sky Island Alliance

The Sky Island Alliance works to preserve and restore native biological diversity in the unique sky islands of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. The term sky islands denotes mountain ranges that are isolated from each other by intervening valleys of grassland or desert and are among the most diverse ecosystems in North America. Sky Island Alliance received $65,000 from the Trust to support its work with the U.S. Forest Service, BLM and area conservation organizations to create a new conservation plan to manage nearly four million acres of valuable southern Arizona habitat. The area contains more threatened and endangered species than any other national forest in the U.S., and the sky islands form the only bridge for many species to move between the Mexican tropics and the northern high plateaus, which includes the Rocky Mountains. The success of this project will assist in establishing restoration and management of wildlife habitat, protection of roadless and wilderness areas, and reintroduction of native species.

Grand Canyon Wildlands Council

The Trust awarded the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council (GCWC) a two-year $125,000 grant to protect and restore critical wildlife habitat through on-the-ground restoration and to assist upcoming forest plan revisions to benefit wildlife. GCWC is working to complete its wilderness inventory and prepare recommendations for the management of northern Arizona's Coconino and Sitgreaves National Forests, which total 4,125,127 acres of land.

The Grand Canyon Wildlands Council was formed in 1996 to create a conservation area network that would ensure the sustainability of all native species and natural ecosystems in the Grand Canyon region. GCWC is part of the Wildlands Project, a continental effort to re-wild North America. Two major accomplishments to date include helping to protect over 1 million acres of the Grand Canyon-Parashant and Vermilion Cliffs National Monuments, and restoring 10 acres of Cottonwood/Willow habitat at Lees Ferry, a popular Colorado River access location.

The Grand Canyon Wildlands Council and the Sky Island Alliance both provide science-based information to generate public support for the introduced conservation measures that will guide government oversight for up to 15 years.

For more information about the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, call 928-556-9306 or visit, www.grandcanyonwildlands.org

For more information about the Sky Island Alliance, call 520-624-7080 or visit www.skyislandalliance.org

Programs Protecting Wildlife (one species at a time)

Bat Conservation International, southern Indiana

For almost 25 years, Bat Conservation International (BCI) has dedicated its work to conserve and restore bat populations and habitats around the world. It educates people about the ecological and economic value of bats, advances scientific knowledge of bats and the ecosystems that rely on them, and preserves critical bat habitats through solutions that benefit both humans and bats.

In 2005 the agency received a $23,500 grant to re-establish endangered Indiana bats (Myotis sodalis). BCI will work with community-based partners to identify key current and former hibernation caves in southern Indiana and then plan site-specific conservation strategies. This is the first opportunity for the Trust to award a grant to protect a specific wildlife species in Indiana. BCI's long-term commitment is to increase the Indiana bat's current estimated count of 400,000 to several million in the eastern one-third of the United States.

BCI will collaborate with a well-established network of Indiana cavers and biologists who serve as project volunteers. These include area scientists, members of the Indiana Karst Conservancy (a new Trust grantee), Indiana Cave Survey, local chapters of the National Speleological Society, and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Partnering organizations will help with time-consuming aspects of the project research, such as the fieldwork involved to find and evaluate caves with evidence of past use by large, Indiana bat colonies.

BCI has already convened groups of cavers and landowners to identify and protect key Indiana bat hibernation sites. By educating local communities, BCI will continue to foster a network of conservation-friendly cavers in Indiana to protect the Indiana bat as it has in neighboring Illinois and Kentucky.

For more information about Bat Conservation International, call 512-327-9721 or visit www.batcon.org

Bat photo courtesy of (C) Merlin D. Tuttle, Bat Conservation International

Peregrine Fund, Idaho, northern Arizona

Beginning in 2001 the Trust granted $150,000 for the California Condor Restoration Project. Thousands of years ago condors, the largest flying birds in North America, lived on both coasts of the continent. By 1900 the condor population plummeted and was limited to southern California due to loss of habitat, a low reproductive rate, poisoning and shooting. In the 1990s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Condor Recovery Team approached the Peregrine Fund to assume leadership in the establishment of a wild breeding population of condors. At that time, there were only 22 surviving birds. Today, the Peregrine Fund reports a wild population of 127 condors, including 59 in northern Arizona, and estimates that by the end of 2006 there will be close to 90 condors in this area. The condor project is in its 12th year and will continue until there is a self-sustaining population of 150 or more California condors living in northern Arizona.

Over the last several years, at least seven condors died of lead poisoning in Arizona. This prompted the Trust to provide an additional $50,000 to monitor lead levels, treat lead-exposed condors, research sources of lead exposure and publish findings to educate the public. The historic Arizona reintroduction is a joint project among The Peregrine Fund, BLM, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Arizona Game and Fish Department, Utah Division of Wildlife, Southern Utah's Coalition of Resources Economics, and others.

Condors are considerably more evident in the canyon country of northern Arizona and Utah due to this collaborative project, and the dream of seeing them as a truly wild and self-sustaining population is becoming a reality.

For more information about the Peregrine Fund, call 208-362-3716 or visit www.peregrinefund.org