Over 1,000 acres of land in Pima county has been acquired by the Phoenix Zoo and the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation to create a wildlife conservation center.
The center will be in Sahuarita, Arizona, and home to many different threatened and endangered species, such as gazelles, cheetahs, and Mexican grey wolves. President and CEO Bert Castro hopes the center will help manage population sustainability and eventually reintroduce them into the wild.
"They’re experiencing tremendous population declines for a variety of reasons — whether it be habitat destruction, poaching, the bushmeat crisis — there’s a lot of reasons why many of these species are having problems.”
There is no official start date to break ground, but tentative plans include educational tours through the center.