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The U.S. government recognized that managing the species for recovery required conserving a significant area of quail habitat. In 1985, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took a major step toward achieving this by purchasing the grasslands of Arizona's Buenos Aires Ranch, which became what is now the 116,585-acre Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Following this acquisition, Refuge managers began restoring masked bobwhite quail habitat by replanting native grasses and by using controlled fires to replenish eroded soils. Listing under the Endangered Species Act required the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a recovery plan for the quail to guide management efforts for the species. Under the recovery plan, the Fish and Wildlife Service has been breeding masked bobwhite quails in captivity and reintroducing them into the wild on the Buenos Aires Refuge. As a result of these efforts, there are now as many as 500 masked bobwhite quail in the wilds of Arizona.
Gila trout conservation measures under the ESA have included: public education efforts, installing fish barriers to reduce the impact of non-native trout species, habitat-improvement structures, and reintroduction of fish to waters historically occupied by the species. Since 1999, Gila trout have returned to two streams in Arizona where they were once found. In April of 2001, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish recommended that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downlist the Gila trout from endangered to threatened. This change would allow for the re-opening of a catch-and-release season for Gila trout in select waters within its range.
By the middle of the twentieth century, fewer than 100 Mexican wolves remained in the United States. The last known Mexican wolf in the wild in the U.S. was killed in Texas in 1970, six years before the animal would be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Restoring the Mexican wolf to the wilderness of the United States has proven to be one of the most ambitious recovery programs to date under the Endangered Species Act. Between 1977 and 1980 U.S. and Mexican wildlife officials cooperated to capture some of the wolves remaining in Mexico for the purpose of establishing a captive breeding program for the animal. In 1982 these same officials signed a Mexican wolf recovery plan calling for the return of 100 wolves to the United States by 2008. In 1998 the offspring of some of the wolves captured more than a decade earlier were released into the Blue Range of Arizona and their howl was once again heard in the mountains of the southwest. While the Mexican wolf still has a way to go before it is declared recovered, the programs of the Endangered Species Act have saved this animal from extinction and put wolves on the ground in a place where they had been gone for almost three decades.
In 1996 something wonderful happened. A rancher who was hunting mountain lions with his hounds cornered a wild jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains of Arizona. Instead of reaching for his gun, he grabbed his camera and documented the first jaguar in the United States in ten years before pulling his hounds away and letting the cat escape. Six months later, a second jaguar was videotaped on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. Additional jaguars have been documented since then. These new confirmed sightings of jaguars in the United States, coupled with their protection under the Endangered Species Act, motivated various stakeholders including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state wildlife agencies, non-governmental conservation organizations, and private landowners to form the Jaguar Conservation Team. To date conservation efforts have centered on education, research, and monitoring to determine the species needs. A multi-agency Jaguar Borderlands Recovery Strategy is being formulated that will bring together wildlife professionals in Mexico and the United States to work to ensure that the cat is effectively conserved and restored on both sides of the border. These and other efforts motivated by the Endangered Species Act will help to ensure that the jaguar remains a part of America's natural heritage. Masked Bobwhite Quail photo courtesy ODNR, Division of Wildlife. |
The grasslands of Arizona and northern Mexico once supported healthy populations of masked bobwhite quail. The introduction of cattle grazing to the region, however, pushed the quail from its native habitat and toward extinction. Efforts to restore masked bobwhite quail in the United States began in 1937 but did not meet with success. The species was considered extinct in the U.S. by 1950. However, in 1964 the last remaining population of masked bobwhite quail was found in Sonora, Mexico, prompting the U.S. government to list it as an endangered species.
The Gila trout is one of the rarest trout species in the United States. Historical reports suggest that it was once native to the San Francisco, Verde, Gila, and Agua Fria River drainages in New Mexico and Arizona. By the 1950s, however, hybridization with non-native trout, erosion and sedimentation caused by poor livestock management, pollution, logging, and other factors had reduced the Gila trout's range to only five streams in the Gila River headwaters in New Mexico. The Gila trout was listed as federally endangered in 1967.
The Mexican wolf is one of the rarest animals in North America. Historically, the wolf roamed the vast mountains and grasslands of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, greeting the Spanish conquistadors and Anglo settlers, its howls echoing across the ranges. Sadly, centuries of shooting by ranchers and government agents to protect livestock and to create unnaturally high deer populations, nearly drove the Mexican wolf to extinction. 
Known as "el tigre" to early Spanish settlers, the jaguar once ranged from the Grand Canyon in today's Arizona south to Argentina. A relatively adaptable animal, jaguars were found from grasslands to forests. Sadly, by the twentieth century, the loss of habitat to development and shooting had largely pushed jaguars from the United States, and it was one of the first wild cats to be listed under the Endangered Species Act.