January 2026| View Upcoming Events

January 2026 Newsletter

Greetings and Happy New Year! I hope that you and your families had a wonderful holiday season.

As you are aware, elections were recently held to elect new Officers for the Zane Grey TU Chapter. The results are in and Ron Stearns was elected as the new Vice President, and I was elected as the new President. 

The Zane Grey TU Chapter has a long history of working hard to make significant impacts in Arizona with its conservation, advocacy and education efforts.  This newsletter is Zane Grey’s primary communication method with its members. To keep abreast of the work ZGTU is pursuing, I encourage you to read the newsletter regarding updates on our current projects.

The Chapter continues to need TU Members who are willing to serve on the ZGTU Board, specifically in the roles of Treasurer and Secretary.  If you have any interest in serving on the Board, please reach out and I will be happy to discuss these opportunities with you.

Should you have questions about Zane Grey and the conservation, advocacy or education projects we are undertaking, please don’t hesitate to contact me.  I can be reached at president@zanegreytu.org.

Ron and I are honored to keep the mission of ZGTU moving forward and look forward to sharing what the Board has planned for the upcoming year.

Salt River Saturday Clean Up!

Our first clean up of the new year is coming up on January 3rd! The weather is balmy, the area beautiful and the fishing good! Come on out and spend Saturday morning in the outdoors doing good for the land! We'll bring the coffee and muffins! See more at Salt River Cleanup with Zane Grey Trout: Sat, Jan 3, 2026.

Conservation

Thompson-Burro Meadow Restoration Project

Nate Rees, TU Staff State Lead, serves as TU’s Lead for conservation work being done here in Arizona. The Thompson-Burro meadow restoration is a $1.8 million project currently underway.   Trout Unlimited recently produced an article that provides an update on this project and the excellent work being done by Nate and this team.  

You can read this article here: New Infrastructure Project By Trout Unlimited Helps Phoenix Valley Water Supply And Arizona’s National Forests   - Trout Unlimited.

December Meeting Summary

The AZ Council of Trout Unlimited Public Policy Committee (AZTU-PPC) held its normal monthly meeting on December 11, 2025, at 7pm. We had two speakers, Ron Doba and Alexis Susdorf, who spoke on rural groundwater management issues in the state of Arizona. Ron highlighted the formation of new Active Management Areas (AMA's) in Douglas, Wilcox, and Reiter Plain basins due to over-pumping and land subsidence. He emphasized the need for local control and proactive measures. Alexis noted ongoing legislative efforts to create a rural groundwater management tool, despite past failures. They presented a groundwater modeling project for the Coconino and Red Wall aquifers, showing potential impacts on surface water flows. The Department of Water Resources is funding further modeling to refine the findings. Ron and Alexis responded to questions from the AZTU-PPC members.

Legislative Update

The state legislature opens its regular session on the second Monday in January each year, and the 2026 session will open on January 12, 2026. The lawmakers are working on bills. The rumors circulating suggest to anticipate over 1,500 bills from the legislators and numerous bills supporting public land sales that will be forthcoming in the 2026 legislative session. TU will be engaging and educating certain legislators about TU's objection to public land sales and to the rescission of the Roadless Rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In June 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its intention to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule. The rescission notice was posted on August 27, 2025, in the Federal Register. Without the Roadless Rule, 45 million acres of National Forest land across the country, impacting fish and wildlife habitat, will be open to harmful development! TU National is now encouraging all state Councils and chapters to start a mailing campaign from TU members to congressmen and congresswomen to stop the discontinuance of the Roadless Rule.

The National Office of Trout Unlimited has created a new TU Advocacy Champions online community group. If you are interested in receiving the periodic emails from the Advocacy Champions, please email Doug Agee at doug.agee@tu.org and request to be put on the email list.

Groundwater Management in Rural Arizona

Tom Osterday - Past Chair AZTU PPC

The Rural Water Working Group held its Annual In-person Meeting on November 14th from 8:30 to 3:30. The event was held at the Red Mountain Campus of Mesa Community College. Speakers included Governor Hobbs, Patrick Adams, the Governor's Water Policy Advisor; Jen Loredo, the Governor's Legislative & Policy Director; Ben Bryce, the Assistant Director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR); Kris Mayes, Arizona's Attorney General; Kevin Moran, VP of Regional Affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund; Kathleen Ferris, Senior Research Fellow at the Kyl Center for Water Policy of ASU, and Bruce Hallin, the former Director of Water Supply for SRP. Specific matters of importance included:

1. The Colorado River water agreement among the seven Basin States will dominate the water discussion in 2026,
2. Legislation to protect rural groundwater continues to be blocked by Gail Griffin, Chairwoman of the House Natural Resources, Energy & Water Committee, and
3. A citizen's initiative may be a more productive path to protecting rural groundwater; however, the initiative process is expensive.

Upcoming Public Policy Events

The next regular scheduled AZTU-PPC monthly Teams meeting will be held on Thursday, January 8, 2026, at 7:00 pm. Our meeting will have a speaker: Meghan Smart with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

The AZTU-Public Policy Committee hosts a virtual Teams meeting on the second Thursday of the month at 7:00 pm until 8:00 pm. If you are interested, please contact Ron Stearns at PublicPolicyChair@az-tu.org.



Join us as we host a series of Salt River Saturdays with our Fishing Club partners, Desert Fly Casters Club (DFC), and Arizona Fly Casters Club (AFC), and of course with the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD).

We've set our dates for the cooler season! Come out and join us for some coffee, camaraderie and clean up! Bring your fishing rod you don't want to pass up a chance for some great fishing, do you?

The Arizona Council consolidated the Arizona Trout Unlimited chapters. Effective January 1, 2025, much of eastern and southern Arizona, Kingman and Navajo County east and south including White Mountains: Show Low, Greer, etc., is becoming a part of the Old Pueblo Chapter based in Tucson.

The Mogollon Rim, and areas west of Kingman, including Flagstaff, Lees Ferry and the Colorado River down to Yuma become part of the "new" Zane Grey Chapter based in Phoenix. The below map will give you some idea of the new alignments. The Green areas are the new Zane Grey Chapter, while the Blue areas are the Old Pueblo Chapter's new alignment. The non colored areas are National parks, Military reservations, or other government areas, do not have postal delivery Zip code, and few if any residents.

The Arizona Sportsmen for Wildlife Conservation (AZSFWC) license plate fund is derived from the sale of wildlife conservation license plates and member organizations as well as non-member organizations are eligible to apply for those funds. 

The Arizona TU Council and Chapters have received funds over the past thirteen years to support the Annual Native and Wild Trout Conferences, Fish Camp, Trout in the Classroom program and various conservation projects.

The next time your registration comes up for renewal, choose the conservation license plate option at registration to show your support for conservation and our projects. 

Social Media: 

Check out our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/zanegreytu Check out the Instagram page for

Arizona of Trout Unlimited: @Trout_Unlimited_Arizona

If you're more traditional, try signing up for the private Facebook group: Arizona Women of Trout Unlimited.

Below is a list of fishing organizations in Arizona. Feel free to join, explore, visit their websites or attend a meeting to find out more information:

Make sure to follow our Instagram @Trout_Unlimited_Arizona