A 20-acre parcel of private land will be added to the Saguaro National Park in Arizona thanks to money from a federal conservation fund fed by offshore oil and gas development.
The land, bought from landscape photographer Thomas Wiewandt, sits in a largely unprotected stretch of the Sonoran Desert on the outskirts of Tucson, between the national park and the Sweetwater Preserve, a locally protected desert trails area.
The Trust for Public Land helped secure the deal with money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses federal oil and gas revenue to acquire new federal lands and waters, particularly tracts of land in or near federal lands that could boost ecosystems and public land access.
Congress permanently funded LWCF at $900 million per year during the first Trump administration.
