We launched our Pathways for Wildlife campaign to the public on Arizona Gives Day to resounding support from our community of donors, volunteers, and partners. To date, we have raised more than $18,000, with nearly half of that coming in during 24 hours on Arizona Gives Day, a statewide day of giving.
We asked folks why they gave to our campaign to secure the Path of the Jaguar, and here’s what some of them had to say!
I give to Sky Island Alliance because I support preserving, protecting, and restoring our unique ecosystem in Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora. I give to Sky Island Alliance because in a time when politicians insult and attack our neighbors, Sky Island Alliance is an organization that builds alliances and relationships with like-minded individuals and organizations in Mexico. I give to Sky Island Alliance because they give me the opportunity to contribute my sweat as well as my money. I give to Sky Island Alliance because they are providing me with a wonderful education about our environment.
Bill Bemis
I donated because Sky Island Alliance values the relationship between humans and all that live within our extremely unique desert home, teaching us to respect native plants, animals, and people within our Sonoran landscape. Perhaps this will help us learn to treat one and other with grace as well. I have always felt that Sky Island Alliance has a poetic way of bringing people, plants and animals together, out of an honoring for all.
We support Sky Island Alliance’s Path of the Jaguar campaign because we are passionately in love with nature. It is vital that all creatures are able to travel their ranges with the food, water and cover they require without fragmentation or destruction of that path. This is an extremely important local program that really makes a difference!
Kent & Jessie Loganbill
Why I give to Sky Island Alliance is because they work to protect the land, water and diverse creatures that traverse one of the most unique, beautiful landscapes in this or any other region. My hope is, that it will always be preserved for future generations of people and animals that call the Sonoran Desert home. ♥
Sherry Lowenthal
I give to the Sky Island Alliance because I believe in the effort to keep the Sky Island chain intact. While I am a supporter of international conservation efforts, I also believe in caring for the environment on my home turf. Jaguars are the flagship species of the Sky Islands, but there are so many other components of this fragile ecosystem that are protected by the preservation of this habitat!
Nancy Bent
As jaguars move through deserts and mountains we’re reminded that we humans have always been a migratory species, and one so dependent on adapting to and being shaped by our connection to climate and place. I’m inspired to support the work of Sky Island Alliance because these mountains and deserts are our home, and we need to keep our home healthy, for jaguars and ourselves.
Ron Steffens
Many things, social and environmental, are bigger than profits or politics. My support for Sky Island Alliance projects – jaguar mobility included – is to provide a known “hands-on, get it done” non-governmental provider with resources to act on those bigger issues. That in turn helps me to still believe that we can as a people still do many good things, if we just step up individually and as groups to meet today’s special challenges.
Bill McGuire
Since moving to Southern Arizona 3+ years ago, I have come to love the desert southwest. I have always been an advocate for conservation/nature organizations and like to support them financially when I am able to do so. Groups like yours do wonderful work to help preserve wildlife & the environment.
Don Scarlett
The Sky Island Region is one of my favorite places on our planet. From my now-home on the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, I still dream of Arizona sycamore in craggy canyons, alligator juniper and madrones reaching up to the deepest blue of skies, and the expansive views over the grassland seas. Even though I now rarely get the chance to visit the Sky Islands, it makes me happy to support Sky Island Alliance’s hard work to restore and protect this special place for the diversity of life that calls the region home. Thank you for all you do.
Stephanie Weinstein
We live in an area of Vail that looks out over the Rincon Mountains and Saguaro National Park (East). The peace, beauty and environmental awe that we feel is only broken by visits from our wonderful desert wildlife. We have been honored to be “the home” to four years (generations) of bob cats in our backyard with one special maternity ward spot that has been used each year right outside one of our windows. I have documented our “kids” and love to see them return time and time again.
We have seen the photos of El Jefe and have wanted to do whatever we could to make for a safe passage for him (her?) and his fellow jaguars. We have sponsored cameras for Saguaro National Park in the hope that one of these beauties will be spotted there. We hope our contribution to Arizona Gives Day to you and your organization will help to provide safe passage for many many more.
Marsha & Peter Badanes
In light of our new presidential orders for a border wall, it’s imperative now more than ever that we need funding and social support to keep these lands open to our special wildlife. The more organizations with money at stake to lose because of this wall will hopefully garner support for a movement against this atrocity to human and animal kind.
Adam Leitman
The glass is beautiful, but not as beautiful as the gracious cat that the proposed border wall threatens.
Thomas Meixner