This post covers the the third, and last, day of our southern Arizona trip, which was our visit to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (BANWR). This is a large refuge (117K acres) established in 1985. We went to the Cienega (aka Cienaga) in the town of Arivaca, which is a small part of the refuge. A Cienega is a wetlands area. Unfortunately, the wetlands are now dried up. This is, I think, due to many decades of groundwater pumping in southern Arizona, which relies on groundwater for almost all of its water supply. This is unlike the Phoenix area, which has a very large supply of surface water. Arivaca is still a nice spot, even though the water is no longer at the surface.
We ate breakfast and checked out of the Best Western on Thursday morning, and got to NWR at about 7:30. It’s a well developed area, with nice trails, and boardwalks over what used to be water. We spent the morning there, and ate lunch.
Next we decided to try another spot in the NWR, called Honnas Pond. This pond was also dry. We only spent about an hour there.
The Buenos Aires NWR is a huge area, and we only scratched the surface. But we decided we were ready to make the drive home.
There’s another place called the Raul M. Grijalva Canoa Ranch Conservation Park, which has a large lake (that’s not dry 🙂), and a lot of reported birds. It is very close to Green Valley. We’ll go there another day, maybe on a day trip.
It was a great trip to Southern Arizona. It’s always nice to get out in nature, and spend time with those you love.
