The Arizona Lottery has awarded $100,000 in funding to the Desert Botanical Garden to support conservation efforts.

The money will benefit two conservation programs at the garden: Saving Arizona’s Urban Saguaros and Other Endangered Plants and Protecting Monarch Butterflies and other Native Pollinators.

“Desert Botanical Garden is leading the charge in Sonoran Desert conservation and has done so since 1939,” Alec Thomson, executive director of the Arizona Lottery, said.

“This partnership is a natural fit for the lottery’s decades-long commitment to supporting environmental conservation efforts in Arizona, and we are proud to support the Garden on these important projects.”

The Saving Arizona’s Urban Saguaros and Other Endangered Plants program focuses on the health and survival of saguaros, a symbol of the Southwest that is facing increasing threats due to extreme heat and urban expansion, according to a release from the Arizona Lottery.

The program includes a saguaro census to monitor and track the health of saguaros in urban areas.

The second initiative, Protecting Monarch Butterflies and Other Native Pollinators, is designed to create and enhance habitats for pollinators that are essential to maintaining ecological balance in the desert.

With monarch butterfly populations in decline, the Desert Botanical Garden is working to study their behavior, promote urban planting of milkweed (the monarch's primary food source) and engage local communities in hands-on conservation efforts, the release stated.

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.