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Melissa Crytzer Fry

@crytzerfry.bsky.social

1.8K followers 380 following 1.2K posts

Writer, citizen scientist, conservationist, naturalist. Sharing a love of nature & the Sonoran Desert thru photos, camera traps. Married to an awesome man. Board Chair, Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance. Fighting to save the Galiuros from copper mining.

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Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · Aug 4

Fighting to save H20 & wildlife in AZ’s Sky Islands (my home). On June 30, BLM approved 67 exploratory drill sites for Canadian Faraday Copper.

Please help! By Aug. 18, 2025, email state and Safford BLM offices. Find easy copy/paste suggestions here: tinyurl.com/3ene6wa6.

What's at stake:

Collage includes images of an ornate tree lizard (turquoise belly); a ringtail (of the raccoon family with a striped tail, but looking like a small cat); the Copper Creek Valley filled with mature cottonwoods, saguaro and ocotillo; a mountain lion walking through lush grass at Copper Creek; a red-tailed hawk landing on a saguaro; a night-blooming cereus; a Lucy's warbler eating from burst, bright-red saguaro fruit; a young hooded skunk, tail erect; and the life-sustaining Copper Creek drainage basin of green foliage among an otherwise brown setting.

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Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 15h

Yay. I'm pretty stoked.

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 15h

Visitors to the pond cam! Juvenile and adult #TurkeyVulture caught on #cameratrap (The adult cracks me up, looking like a water feature).

Two turkey vultures at the shallow pond, next to the bowl. Foreground bird has a gray/black head, indicating it is a younger vulture. Red-headed adult is bending down to drink, and water is shooting out of its beak like a water fountain!

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Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, Saunie. This is really exciting and such a lovely gift.

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, Marina.

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, Pamela.

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 1d

100%!!!

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 1d

I'm trying to decide if this is my dad's message to me...

I've been a big champion (in AZ) of beaver restoration for watersheds -- you might say, obsessed. Did my dad summon this beaver as a message to "Keep on going. Keep fighting for your desert? Stick with the beavers"...

I'm going with it.

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Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 1d

This is SUPER exciting. My dad had this pond built at my childhood home in NW PA 5 years ago...

It appears a #beaver has moved in! Dad, who passed Sept. 6, would have been SO thrilled at this development! My sis just put camera traps up to see if we can get images. 🤞

A small tree that was taken down near the woods, with gnaw marks along it, and lots of beaver "saw dust" and "chips" in the grass!

This appears to the entrance to the beaver's hidey hole/house -- and in this image, a freshly chewed log/stick appers!

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Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 2d

Various views and signs of life along the Sonoran Desert's gorgeous #SanPedroRiver Valley.

View of the churning San Pedro River with "the Saddle" of the Galiuros in the background -- a mesa eroded into a U on the mountain chain.

Tiny little foot prints in the oozy mud along the San Pedro. These were only 1/5" big. Skunk?

Perennial water along the northern reach of the San Pedro.

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 3d

Happy #sunrise and #saguaro Monday! Enlarge to full-size for full effect!

The Galiuro Mountains rise majestically into a sea of puffy clouds, lit pink-orange with sunrise.

It's rare to see stately saguaros with cloudy backdrops - but here they are: two giant saguaros set against the blue, gray, and white of a cloud blanket.

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Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 4d

Wow. Such wise words. I wish BlSk had a boomark function. This WOULD be bookmarked.

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 4d

Said SO WELL. TYfor reposting. Got some more shitty news ... Faraday was in DC having "meetings" with the Permitting Council, who - 3 days later - listed this as a Fast-41 Transparency project. They'll spin it that they're being 'transparent with permitting,' but this put a target on our mts/river.

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 4d

Oh, yes. And he uses it often!

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 4d

Wow - that's a lot for dog mom to juggle. I hope all goes well!!!

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Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 4d

And the little stinker knows it!

Melissa Crytzer Fry @crytzerfry.bsky.social · 4d

When you mine out there in the mountains, you imperil the southwest's last free-flowing river down here. First you steal from the San Pedro's tributary, #CopperCreek. Then you'll steal subsurface H20 from the river. And you, foreign #mining company, get our precious H20 for free.