Colorado State University
Support from the Southwest Border Resource Protection Program has allowed the Center for Protected Area Management at Colorado State University to increase participation by field staff of Mexico’s National Commission on Protected Areas (CONANP) in our international short courses at CSU on protected area management, sustainable tourism in protected areas, and women’s leadership in conservation. Support from the SWBRPP has also enabled us to facilitate cooperation by CONANP staff from parks and reserves along the Rio Grande to engage in joint activities with NPS sister parks like Big Bend, and has also supported greater CONANP participation in international webinars and conferences on protected area management sponsored by our Center. Such cross-border cooperation is vital to address challenges shared by Mexican and US parks and to promote continued cooperation on addressing conservation issues and conserving ecosystems and cultural resources that transcend the international border between Mexico and the USA.
Sky Island Alliance
When the term“borderlands” is heard, many times it provokes thoughts and images of a chaotic buffer zone between two different countries, two different peoples, and two different ways of life. What does not always come to mind are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems that exist in North America. What escapes these thoughts is the diversity and unity of communities and a region split into two separate identities. As ecologists we use the word “edge effect” to describe the overlapping zone of two habitats/populations/communities etc. The SWBRPP values and invests in one of the most dynamic edge effects of the United States. The impacts are not only felt ecologically, but socially and culturally. Sky Island Alliance is so grateful to SWBRPP for helping us provide safe passage for endangered species like jaguar between federally protected lands in both the U.S. and Mexico, keeps spring waters flowing perennially across our arid landscape, and helps train the next generation of conservation land stewards that will keep our region thriving in the future.
New Mexico Tech
Support from the Southwest Border Resource Protection Program (SWBRPP) has played a pivotal role for junior researchers like me in establishing a research agenda. The program provides an opportunity to bridge theoretical research and data analytics with field evidence. It is a great way to inspire new project ideas and discover research needs. The collaborations with Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Chiricahua National Monument (including Coronado National Memorial and Fort Bowie National Historic Site) have also been a great learning opportunity. All these can only happen because of the support from the SWBRPP. My current project focuses on vegetation change in and around national park-protected areas in the border region. Meanwhile, there are many open transboundary policy-relevant research questions concerning the environment and natural resources in the Southwest border region. I expect the SWBRPP to play a growingly important role in this area.
University of Arizona – School of Natural Resources and the Environment
SWBRPP provided us with a unique and valuable opportunity to address a broad suite of objectives focused on: 1) ecological monitoring on lands managed by NPS, 2) understanding the patterns and drivers of changes in wildlife communities, 3) linking monitoring in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (OPCNM) with similar efforts in its sister park in Mexico - the Pinacate Biosphere Reserve, and 4) implement training, education and outreach in this region of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Despite presence of long-term data on bird communities in OPCNM that date back to the late 1980s, there had been no effort surveying long-term study sites since 2004, little effort to analyze past data to understand changes in communities and how variation in climate, vegetation, and border development are impacting them, or to evaluate the implications for management. Efforts to inventory bird communities in Pinacate were also limited and not integrated with those across the border in OPCNM. With support from SWBRPP, we were able to start closing these information gaps for an important focal group of wildlife that are excellent indicators of ecological and environmental change, and highly efficient to survey across large areas.
The University of Arizona – Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center and School of Natural Resources and the Environment
SWBRPP has allowed us to expand our long-term jaguar, ocelot and other wildlife monitoring effort in mountain ranges in the southeast area of Arizona, where we detect and monitor endangered and sensitive mammalian, reptile, and avian species to assist agency biologists and land managers in conservation efforts for wildlife in Southern Arizona. Three National Park units, Chiricahua National Monument (CNM), Fort Bowie National Historic Park (FOBO), and Coronado National Memorial (CORO) are included in this monitoring effort and are spread among the geographic areas we have been monitoring since 2012. Funding from SWBRPP, technical support from NPS park staff and the Sonoran Desert Network, and on the ground assistance from NPS has allowed us to add this valuable area that will fill gaps in our 10-year monitoring efforts in this part of southeast Arizona. Data from this effort will help us achieve our objectives of 1) placing additional trail cameras for jaguar detection and monitoring in CNM, FOBO, and CORO and 2) use the data to perform occupancy modeling for species of interest in this study area . This effort is currently being conducted by a large team of citizen scientists so that provides additional benefits as a citizen science education and outreach initiative. Other benefits include NPS and other agency land and wildlife managers having access to the data to assist their management decisions.
Last updated: March 21, 2022