Field Notes
Estudio de la vida silvestre fronteriza: un año de conteo de especies
May 12, 2021La región de las Islas del Cielo alberga una impresionante diversidad de especies de vida silvestre en este paisaje accidentado donde se entremezclan especies templadas y tropicales. Para documentar la verdadera diversidad de un lugar, se debe emplear una amplia gama de métodos, de los cuales cada uno está diseñado para detectar una especie o…
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Configuring New FotoFauna Cameras in Mexico / Configuración de Cámaras FotoFauna en México
May 11, 2021Miguel Francisco Enriquez Galaz joined Sky Island Alliance as an intern in 2019. After a two-year internship, we’re delighted that he’s staying on through 2021 as a Sky Island Fellow to help coordinate Sky Island FotoFauna submissions across the region. Here are some of his insights from setting up trail cameras in Sonora, Mexico: “My…
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Border Wildlife Study: Measuring Nighttime Habitats
May 6, 2021In April 2021, Sky Island Alliance and Round River Conservation Studies followed the Globe at Night methodology to measure the nighttime sky quality across the Border Wildlife Study site and along the flanking border regions. Along 84 miles, our staff and volunteers took stellar magnitude readings of the sky at night at points between the…
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Border Wildlife Study: A Year of Counting Species
The Sky Island region is home to a tremendous diversity of wildlife species in this rugged landscape where temperate and tropical species intermix. To document the true diversity of a place, one must employ a wide range of methods that each are optimized to detect a particular species or taxonomic group. For the Border Wildlife…
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Setting Up FotoFauna Cameras along the Arizona Trail
May 3, 2021In April, I had the opportunity to head up Miller Peak with Chelsey Tellez, Wildlife Monitoring Coordinator at the Arizona Trail Association (ATA). We set out with a skip in our step and a few pounds of wildlife cameras in our backpacks. Chelsey was excited to collect data from wildlife cameras she had set out a few months ago as part of a…
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Notes from the Field: Spiders Abound at Trail Cameras near the Huachuca Mountains
April 30, 2021Checking the cameras in the Border Wildlife Study is always full of wildlife sightings and interesting plants. But when I checked a block of cameras in the Huachuca Mountain foothills last Monday, there was a particular emphasis on spiders! Spider #1: While hiking to one of the cameras in the native grasslands of the valley, I came across a…
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Friday Creature Feature: Black Bear
April 22, 2021What marks spring in the Sky Islands better than the sight of bear coming out of hibernation*? In honor of this species—a harbinger of warmer months and blooming flora—we’re dedicating today’s Friday Creature Feature to black bear. Name: Common — Black bear Scientific — Ursus americanus Spanish — Oso negro Description: Almost everyone knows what a black bear looks like. Just…
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Las Primeras Percepciones en FotoFauna de Sky Island sobre la Fauna Silvestre de la Región
April 15, 2021Nuestra primera visión sobre la distribución de la diversidad de mamíferos y aves en la región de la Isla de Cielo ¡Está aquí! Desde que inició el proyecto FotoFauna de Sky Island, en octubre del 2020, voluntarios y organizaciones de México y Estados Unidos han contribuido mensualmente con cerca de 450 listas de esta creciente…
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Two More Weeks to Join the 2021 Border BioBlitz!
April 13, 2021The borderlands of Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora contain a wealth of biodiversity. White-nosed coati, Arizona gray squirrel, raven, and mule deer live and mate alongside black bear, mountain lion, North American porcupine, and rattlesnake to create one of the most alive and diverse regions globally. The birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects that live here take shelter…
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A Month of Good News for Large Cats in the Sky Islands
April 7, 2021We at Sky Island Alliance love this region’s large cats. After all, how many places in the world can you find bobcat, mountain lion, ocelot, and jaguar all living together in mountain and grassland habitat? The answer, of course, is not very many. We are lucky to live in such an incredibly biodiverse region. Wild cats have…
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