The US-Mexico border runs through the heart of the Sky Island Region—a unique continental crossroads between temperate and neotropical worlds—rich with both human and animal life. For millennia, wildlife freely roamed between major mountain chains of the Sierra Madres and the Rocky Mountains, thriving in the Sky Islands that rise up from the desert southwest as cool and lush mountain refuges. Three Sky Island mountain chains, six National Parks, 25 million acres of protected public lands, and countless wildlife pathways intersect the US-Mexico border.
Today, 700 miles of wall stand at the border and more walls are coming. Border walls stop animals in their tracks, cutting off their access to food, shelter, and mates. Seven hundred species of vertebrates living in the borderlands today face unprecedented threat today from new border wall construction that will prevent threatened species like jaguar, ocelot, and Sonoran pronghorn from migrating north into the US from Mexico.
Sky Island Alliance studies the presence and movement of wildlife species through the borderlands in Arizona and northern Mexico to learn which wildlife pathways need protection most urgently. In our new Wildlife at the Wall campaign, we are doubling our effort to document where species need open borders so that we can build public support to stop the wall.
To learn more, read about our ongoing study of wildlife in the borderlands and come join us to celebrate wildlife at the border on October 5, 2019 at our Celebration of Crossborder Cats at the Borderlands Festival from 10am to 4pm at Coronado Memorial.
