[Guitar music]
(Pat) We knew that it would never be a golf course again.
We decided that since it was 70% desert
and it was a beautiful desert golf course,
that it was totally worth saving as a nature preserve.
(Andy) These are putting out a lot of flowers now
and we got fruit coming.
So there'll be more growth in here.
(Gordon) After the golf course closed for a while, it stayed
very green and the fairways had still had grass for a while.
They tried to keep it going in case a buyer could buy it.
Then we gradually noticed that it was turning
into a more of a Sonoran Desert environment.
But the animals still remained.
It was a wildlife corridorr.
We noticed that they transit by our place every day or two.
Herds of mule deer, little family packs of Javelina
and coyotes.
So it was just like a a wildlife TV show. Live.
You see bicycle riders, you see walkers
all along the six miles of the former cart path.
We've spent 2019 organizing growing our members.
We now have 1850 members of Preserve Vistoso.
And then in 2020 we demonstrated to the town
that we were pretty serious about this.
In March, the property owner filed to rezone
almost half of this property with either houses and or
a senior living center in the middle of one area
where the driving range was.
We of course were totally opposed to it.
It was COVID time, so we had to do Zoom and emails
and we sent 1300 emails to the town of Oro Valley.
We tested the strength of their Zoom
calls with hundreds of people attending,
and we went to town council meetings
and said, No, no, no, this cannot
you cannot change the zoning to allow all these houses here.
It will break off the wildlife corridor and it will ruin
what we know as this beautiful nature preserve.
One of our members went and got the Conservation Fund,
which is a nationally recognized organization to come here.
And they were so impressed, I think, by
what we were doing that they decided to help us.
Once you get the trees in like over there,
then you're going to be okay, right?
[Soft piano music]
We wanted to do a survey of the plants and animals
here at the preserve. You know, how did it.
What did it look like when it started off?
What were the
kind of the ecology of the place when it started off?
So we only had about 20, 20
different kinds of plants and animal species.
And I just we now have a patriotic 1776
observations of 328 species.
(Pat) We raised the money to purchase this sum, almost
$2 million the community raised to purchase this,
to allow the Conservation Fund to purchase this.
They purchase it, put it into a nature conservancy.
And we
they closed in February, I believe, on the property
and donated to the town on July 8th.
And now we're in the planning stages and we're so excited
about what this can be.
[Bright guitar music]
We want people to come here and enjoy the space
and learn in the space and and meditate and exercise
all of those things where when you leave,
it leaves a lasting impression in your heart
and that there's no other place like this in our community.
And so they want to come back again
next time and explore a different area
and see how it's changed from the spring to the fall.
Get down to the native soil,
put it on the slopes of the rain comes in.
I started taking pictures with my little Nikon camera.
They were turning out
very nicely, especially we had a big Saguaro cactus out back
that was kind of a focus point for all the wildlife.
We get pictures of all the birds sitting on the cactus,
one of them a dove nesting in the cactus, screech
owl in the Cactus Woodpecker family
that has had two or three sets of babies every year.
We've been here and we watched them.
So that's been kind of a really good experience.
And here's the mesquite tree that's flowering again because,
(Andy) You know, some people probably wondered
whether it really was that much of a nature preserve
was it worth preserving.
But you can see this is a lot of different
kinds of plants and animals that live here
and it really is a valuable thing
and it will get better, as
as the rest of the old golf course goes back to nature.
If you can't have a golf course, what's the next best thing?
And we and we've grown
to love the concept of having a community area
where we can walk with kids or with a bicycle.
You can have bicycle riders, the kids cross here
if you go to school, it's just a wonderful community property.
[Music fades, birds call in the distance]