10 Fun Mountain Facts
April 9, 2020Our Border Wildlife Study is measuring wildlife diversity along 34 mountainous miles of the U.S. border with Mexico in southern Arizona. The camera array spans the foothills of the Patagonia and Huachuca Mountains—two fascinating binational Sky Island mountain ranges! Here are…
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The Science Behind our new Border Wildlife Study
April 1, 2020With border wall actively under construction in Southern Arizona, it’s a race against time to document the wildlife community living in unwalled stretches of the international border today. We designed…
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Small Saguaros Surge Skyward! Preliminary Results from the Census
January 4, 2020In December, Sky Island Alliance volunteers took to the trails in Saguaro National Park East District to count and measure saguaros as part of the Saguaro Census. Every ten years, Saguaro National…
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Holiday Botany
December 25, 2019Botanical signs of the holidays abound in the Sky Island region. From mistletoe that puffs out with green sprigs in desert mesquite and palo verde trees. To the many species…
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Staff Highlight: Emily Burns
December 16, 2019Emily Burns: Program Director Favorite place in Sky Islands? The view from Montezuma Pass in the Huachuca Mountains is spectacular. Looking south you can see the amazing sky islands of…
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Thank you Bryon Lichtenhan!
December 5, 2019 In mid-November, Bryon Lichtenhan and I tracked wildlife in the Patagonia Mountains to see which species are walking across the U.S.-Mexico border at this time of year. Bryon steadily…
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Tracking Saguaros—75 Years of Change in the Cactus Forest
November 11, 2019The cactus forest at Saguaro National Park is changing. In 1941, concerned park researchers established 6 plots containing saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) in the Rincon Mountain District to track park populations…
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New Border wall threatens Desert Oasis at San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge
November 4, 2019Along the US border with Mexico, sits a unique marsh called the San Bernardino cienaga, where wildlife migrates across the international border between Mexico and the mountains of Arizona. This…
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Tarantula vs. Tarantula Hawk—A Halloween Horror Story with a Happy Ending
October 28, 2019On a warm September evening near Saguaro National Park in Tucson, I arrived home and stumbled upon a tarantula hawk circling around a small, female desert blonde tarantula that it…
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The Mexican Origin of Pumpkins
Did you know that the pumpkins we decorate to celebrate Halloween trace their early origins to pre-Hispanic Mexico? A crop that dates back more than 7,500 years, the earliest pumpkins…
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