Field Notes
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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Embracing a New Era—with a New Secretary of the Interior
April 5, 2021April. It’s a fresh slate with desert blooms, Covid-19 vaccines, and Deb Haaland’s first full month as the Secretary of the Interior. There’s a lot to look forward to! Haaland’s election is a historic moment. She is a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and is also the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. But she’s not new to politics—in 2018 she was one of the first two Native American women…
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The First Sky Island FotoFauna Insights into Wildlife of the Region
April 1, 2021It’s here—our first look at how the diversity of mammals and birds is distributed across the Sky Island region! Since launching Sky Island FotoFauna in October 2020, volunteers and organizations in Mexico and the U.S. have contributed nearly 450 monthly checklists from this growing network of cameras. Each checklist adds another piece to the regional wildlife puzzle—helping us see more clearly where wildlife species are present and absent each month across the landscape. We want to understand the distribution of a…
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Notes from the Field: Van Trap and Chimney Spring in the Southern Rincon Wilderness
March 29, 2021Volunteers lie at the heart of our Spring Seeker program. In 2020, 63 people helped us check over 220 springs in the U.S. and Mexico—a feat that would be impossible for staff alone. Retired wildland firefighter Brit Rosso is one of our steadfast Spring Seeker volunteers. Not only is he dedicated to hiking rough terrains…
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Protecting Dark Skies Along the U.S.-Mexico Border
March 26, 2021Dark skies are a remarkable feature of the Sky Island region. When true darkness blankets the landscape at night, it provides spectacular views of the stars and high–quality nocturnal habitat for numerous migrating and resident wildlife species. Lighting along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of any border infrastructure system stands to disrupt the health and ecology of a tremendous number of species. In our Border Wildlife Study, we’ve found that…
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Community’s Choice: The Best 18 FotoFauna Photos of Winter 2021
Our December FotoFauna photo contest was so much fun—with everyone cracking wildlife jokes and enjoying exciting regional photos—that we decided to do it all over again! This time, the Sky Island FotoFauna network helped us whittle over 1,000 submissions down to 54 finalists across 18 categories: some new and some fan favorites returning from last…
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We’re Rooting for Native Flora at Aravaipa Canyon Preserve!
March 22, 2021In early March, a team of six volunteers and three Sky Island Alliance staff braved the chilly spring evenings at Aravaipa Canyon Preserve to do two days of hard, earnest work: pull invasive periwinkle from the creek bed. The nine of us spent over ten hours total that weekend bent over the cool Arizona water, which felt good in the sun as we loosened vinca from the hard…
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Actualización del Programa: El Estudio de la Fauna de la Frontera llega a su meta Primero Año
March 18, 2021La semana pasada era monumental para nosotros. Exactamente hace un año, nuestra red de cameras comenzó a documentar la comunidad de fauna silvestre a lo largo de la frontera de México y Estados Unidos. En loa días que instalamos las cámaras y las dejamos para operar todos los días y las noches, en verdad no sabíamos…
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A Sampling of Flora in the San Rafael Valley: Shrubs
March 12, 2021In A Sampling of Flora in the San Rafael Valley: Grasses, I mentioned how I’d recently picked up a plant identification book after years of slowly falling in love with the different flora that grows in this region. Part of this decision was thanks to first time I’d gone out into the field with our Springs Specialist, Sami Hammer,…
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Border Wildlife Study Hits 1-Year Milestone
March 11, 2021This week is monumental for us. Exactly one year ago, our Border Wildlife Study camera array began clicking away to document the wildlife community along the U.S.-Mexico border. At the time we set the cameras up and left them to operate day and night, we truly didn’t know what the year would bring. In the following months, the pandemic changed our personal and professional lives, the…
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