STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS

INTER-AGENCY COMMUNICATION

Greater coordination of ongoing mission programs will require reliable, user-friendly communication links among various stakeholders. In addition to providing a much-needed forum for internal communication within participating agencies, the Missions Initiative creates opportunities for regular exchange among research professionals, resource interpreters and members of the public interested in contributing to the quality of resource management programs. All materials published associated with the Missions Initiative will include both English and Spanish translations.

Potential focus areas:

• Development of project website for updates on Missions Initiative programs/events and links to existing websites of participating agencies
• Establishment of annual or semi-annual conferences on current mission research and cultural resource management practices
• Publication of news and feature articles in a Missions Initiative newsletter, distributed to site visitors and prospective program partners, and posted on the website

  

Historic Orchards Project
Mission gardens are key elements of the borderlands' regional ethnobotanical history. A current project sponsored by the University of Arizona and the National Park Service (NPS) is documenting historic orchard stock brought into the Sonoran Desert region by missionaries under the direction of Father Eusebio Kino and others in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The project is international in scope and is recording the species, location, documentation, feasibility of transportation, propagation, and other related items for orchard trees and other fruits. A second part of the research will involve the formulation of genotype schemata that can be compared with historic plant collections in the Americas and Europe to further confirm the continued existence and promulgation of original orchard and fruit stock brought to the Americas from Europe as part of the Columbian Exchange. Stock successfully located and cultivated will be used to establish historic landscape elements including orchards, fields, and vineyards at sites such as Tumácacori National Historic Site and the proposed Tucson Origins Park.