8% [of the contributions* go] to the Tourism Fund administered by the State Office of Tourism…[and] 8% goes to the AZ Wildlife Conservation Fund administered by the State Game and Fish Commission.
Arizona Tribes have contributed $139.1 million since FY2004 (including $12.3 million in FY2014) to both the Tourism Fund and the Wildlife Conservation Fund (split 50-50) . A few years ago, the director of the Arizona Office of Tourism credited this money with keeping Arizona competitive with better-funded tourism destinations.
The Arizona Wildlife Conservation Fund has supported studies of bison, bighorn sheep, various fish species, black bears, bobcats, coyotes, and foxes. It has also helped reintroduce wild turkeys, restore grasslands, and bolster Apache and Gila trout populations. In addition to funding state wildlife conservation, Tribes around the state have undertaken ecosystem restoration and management on their own reservations. Work such as the Cocopah Tribe’s efforts with the National Wildlife Federation to restore the Colorado River shoreline habitat [M] and the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s efforts with US Fish & Wildlife to help the Apache trout move from endangered to threatened status under the Endangered Species Act redounds to the benefit of all Arizonans.
* Contributions after payments to cities, towns, counties, the Arizona Dept. of Gaming, and the Office of Problem Gambling.
In the dozen years since the Arizona Tribes signed new gaming compacts with Arizona, they have directly shared more than $1.1 billion dollars with their fellow Arizonans under the terms of those compacts.
