Field Notes
Notes from the Field: The Great Porcupine Search
June 10, 2021Photo Caption: A North American porcupine detected on one of our Border Wildlife Study cameras. Thank you to our wonderful volunteer, Alicia Stout, for this engaging blog post she wrote on her recent wildlife adventures with SIA staff in the field! If you have similar stories of volunteering with us, please send a write-up to…
Read more »
Notes from the Field: Wildlife in San Antonio Canyon
May 18, 2021Recently, Sky Island Alliance staff had the opportunity to take a group of reporters down to our Border Wildlife Study area so that they could see what’s at stake with the threat of more border infrastructure looming over the region. While we were visiting, we got the chance to visit one of our wildlife cameras that predates the study, as well…
Read more »
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…
Read more »
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…
Read more »
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…
Read more »
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…
Read more »
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…
Read more »
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…
Read more »
Community’s Choice: The Best 18 FotoFauna Photos of Winter 2021
March 26, 2021Our 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…
Read more »
The Border Wildlife Study Rodeo
February 24, 2021For many youngsters around the West, it is Rodeo Break. I hardly ever went to the actual Rodeo, but I sure miss having those two days off! In our Border Wildlife Study, I’ve seen plenty of animals both cattle and wildlife having their own rodeo days all year long—with no stinkin’ humans around. Enjoy this…
Read more »