Join this Coffee Break to hear from Profauna’s Mario Cirett and Antonio Esquer about binational collaborations investing in conservation and restoration of the Sonoran Sky Island since the early 2000s. Thanks to the Parks in Peril program from USAID, the San Pedro River watershed experienced one of its more important conservation moments towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s. Through organizations like The Nature Conservancy and local state government agencies in Sonora, Mexico, the funds from Parks in Peril were used to strengthen the operations and management of the Ajos-Bavispe Wildlife Reserve and the implementation of conservation projects on private lands.
For the first time, Ajos-Bavispe and the broader Sonoran Sky Islands had enough resources to support a great number of conservation actions—from bird monitoring, sustainable ranching workshops, and Mexican prairie dog conservation projects to the acquisition of Rancho Los Fresnos. The lessons learned during those years created the foundations for conservation practice that we now apply in the region and showed us that when governments and organizations decide to invest in conservation it pays off.