W ater is often in short supply in the arid western United States, and not just for people. Animals in the region can also have a difficult time locating a supply of freshwater. With this in mind, state governments and conservation groups have installed wildlife water developments, or guzzlers, in remote arid wildlife habitat since the middle of the last century. Guzzlers typically have an impermeable roof structure that is designed to intercept precipitation, is approximately 0.6–0.9 m (2–3 ft) off the ground, and is slightly sloped to encourage runoff to f low into a gutter on the downslope side (Fig. 1). Water flows from the guzzler roof structure into a partially buried cistern [~1,200-L (325-gal) capacity], which is open on one end to allow access to wildlife. The structure is surrounded by a barbed wire fence to prevent guzzler access by cattle, wild horses, and burros. In Nevada, in addition to a scarcity of fresh surface water, there is also a scarcity of precipitation data. Nevada has the lowest precipitation gauge density in the contiguous United States. Because of this poor gauge coverage, precipitation and runoff must be estimated for most areas with hydrologic models using limited data. This lack of available observations becomes a problem when modeling precipitation over complex, often mountainous terrain typical of Nevada. Models such as the Parameter-Elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) produce high-resolution, spatially complete estimates of climatological elements for the entire state, but reliability of these estimates depends on the quality and coverage of precipitation measurements. Twelve monitoring stations in the Sheep and Snake Ranges of Nevada have been instrumented to monitor climate data and other environmental parameters as part of a recent $15 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) project. However, it may be possible to augment measured climate data at a lower cost per site in the western United States. In a new article in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, researchers at the University of Nevada at Reno present findings of a pilot project initiated to explore the feasibility of using guzzlers as climate data collection sites. There are more than 1,600 guzzlers in Nevada (Fig. 2), most installed in remote, midto high-elevation basins that are especially vulnerable to changes in precipitation due to climate change. Two guzzlers in the west-central part of the state were retrofitted with a tipping-bucket-style rain gauge, a probe to measure air temperature, a transducer to measure the depth of water in the guzzler storage tank, and a motionsensing wildlife camera to monitor guzzler usage. observations