Project Spotlight

Sky Island Alliance

In Spring 2021, Sky Island Alliance launched the 1,000 Cats Project to unite community scientists across the U.S.-Mexico border. The project seeks to document native cats across the region to better understand binational feline habitat, celebrate the fascinating ecology of cats, and raise publicawareness of feline conservation needs and how individuals in everycommunity can help protect cats. Since the project launched, we activated our binational network of Sky Island FotoFauna students, volunteers, and conservation partners on both sides of the border to share monthly checklists of mountain lion, bobcat, ocelot, and jaguar sightings detected by wildlife cameras, trained new wildlife trackers on how to search for and document cat tracks and other sign, and produced a series ofcommunications aimed at celebrating and catalyzing local feline conservation actions.