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Arizona Builders Helping to Save Cactus and Owls
Through a concerted effort by the Tucson Cactus & Succulent Society and the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association (SAHBA), cereus and other plants are being rescued and replanted as the city’s growing population continues to spread into the Sonoran Desert.
Also known as Queen of the Night, cereus is a long, cylindrical tuber that once a year blooms after the sun goes down with a sweet-scented, white and golden flower.
 As part of its broader community outreach efforts, SAHBA’s board is helping to finance the program and many of its members are participating in cactus rescues, said the association’s president, Ed Taczanowsky.
Builders are also inviting program volunteers to visit their work sites before grading begins to survey plants. The plants protected under requirements of a local native plant protection ordinance are tagged, and those that will not be preserved in the landscaping are gathered early in the morning to be transplanted to another location.
Fortunately, said Alex Jácome of the SAHBA government affairs staff, most desert plants adjust well to their new surroundings and specimens such as barrel cacti, hedgehogs, bocatilla and other varieties can be removed fairly easily without fear of damaging them. Heavy equipment may be required for larger plants, and that’s when residential construction crews especially come in handy. “We tag them and transport them to a collection site at a local nursery,” he said.
Plants are sold to local home owners and the profits are plowed back into the society’s education and outreach initiative. Since the program began in 1999, nearly 30,000 cacti have been rescued.
SAHBA also participates in other programs geared to helping protected or endangered species recover, Taczanowsky said. Members support the Tucson Wildlife Center and work in a captive breeding program for the endangered masked bobwhite quail.
Two years ago, volunteers from the association began working with Arizona Game & Fish and Wild at Heart, an environmental group, to find homes for displaced burrowing owls. The 10-inch owls sleep and lay their eggs in burrows and holes abandoned by other animals and emerge to hunt small reptiles and insects. With the decline of the prairie dog and other burrowing animals in the area, the owls are losing habitat.
SAHBA member volunteers provide equipment to dig new nesting sites for the owls and, using five-gallon drums and tubing, have built 300 successful burrows so far.
For information on environmental resources available from NAHB, e-mail Calli Schmidt, or call her at 800-368-5242 x8132.
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