Building Alliances to Promote Conservation in Arizona and the Intermountain West
NAME:
Karen LaFrance
LOCATION:
Phoenix, AZ
ORGANIZATION:
Sonoran Audubon Society
Karen LaFrance understands the importance of building partnerships to achieve conservation goals. Through her life’s work in community revitalization, Karen is a believer that people with widely divergent interests can work together to promote common goals and practices.
As Vice President of Sonoran Audubon Society, based in Glendale, Arizona, Karen has helped her Audubon chapter build partnerships to support bird conservation. Sonoran Audubon Society manages an Important Bird Area (IBA) in the Agua Fria National Monument that is critical for large mammals like pronghorn antelope, as well as for riparian, upland and grassland birds. Because of mutual concern for key habitat in this area, Sonoran Audubon has forged good relations with hunting groups in Arizona.
In 2008, Karen helped her chapter identify birds of particular conservation concern for its geographic area. The chapter has begun to manage its conservation activities around those birds so as to have a strategic, locally appropriate conservation focus. With Karen’s help, the Society is creating a conservation outreach plan to foster new partnerships and participation in the suburbs and towns west of Phoenix.
For her TogetherGreen Fellowship project, Karen will organize and hold a leadership development “round up” or summit for Arizona chapter leaders to which the Western Intermountain states’ chapters will also be invited. This meeting will help chapters improve their conservation efforts through collaborative community involvement methods and nonprofit strategic planning, operational, and management best practices.
Long term, the project will support a network of chapter leaders who are concerned about the viability and staying power of their Audubon chapters to engage new and diverse audiences, and to help protect key wildlife and bird habitat, water resources, and climate through conservation action.