Written By: Esquer Robles, Jesus Antonio; Aaron Flesch; Trevor Hare, David Seibert, Kurt Vaughn

The Madrean Sky Islands region of northwest Mexico provides the northernmost wintering habitats, a diverse set of breeding habitats, critical stopover areas and migratory corridors for >100 species of Neotropical migratory birds (NMB) including the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Bell's Vireo, Warbling Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Common Yellowthroat and Wilson’s Warbler. Conservation efforts focusing on these species and their habitats are often stymied by major scientific, social, economic, and logistical challenges since NMB require wintering, stop-over, and breeding habitats that are separated by thousands of kilometers and often span national, jurisdictional, and other physical boundaries.
Modern unsustainable land use practices, especially overgrazing, can negatively affect both the quality and extent of habitats important to NMB. Moreover, because the vast majority of lands that are essential to NMB are privately owned, especially in Mexico strategies that improve conservation efforts on private lands are needed. Unfortunately, the people responsible for the management of these critical areas rarely understand their ecological value nor do they have the resources to sustainably manage them. To address those challenges and attempt to realize NMB conservation at landscape scales, approaches that integrate protection, management, restoration, education, and monitoring are needed.
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Starting in 2012, BR and its partners began a multifaceted effort to integrate existing education, outreach, and research programs with targeted habitat restoration of degraded riparian areas with the potential to support cottonwood-willow forests, which have been documented to be critical habitat for NMB. With the financial support from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) via the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA), we collaborated with local landowners, citizens, and volunteers to construct cattle exclusion fencing and erosion control along >25 km of riparian areas, which protected 569 ha in Northern Sonora, Mexico. Complementarily to this effort we restored over 600 ha of riparian habitat in the adjacent Southeastern Arizona borderlands. In order to
monitor the effectiveness of the restoration treatments and guide future efforts, we gathered baseline data on NMB and vegetation in restoration treatments and nearby control areas.”
With some additional support from the USFWS we are continuing this work while actively developing new relationships with landowners, ejido members, and academic institutions to foster cooperative management and restoration projects on private lands. This renewed effort includes the continued maintenance of existing exclosures, the enhancement of existing restoration infrastructure and the extension of our efforts with an additional 16 km of riparian areas in the same border regions of Northern Sonora and Southern Arizona. In this phase we now have restoration agreements with 10 landowners to restore 11 sites: one on the private ranch El Aribabi; one on the ejido Santa Cruz; four in the San Lázaro community (Ejido Miguel Hidalgo) and five in the Milpillas community (ejido Miguel Hidalgo). While we continue to monitor the efficacy of restoration treatments on NMB populations and the recovering riparian vegetation we are working with local conservation educators to expanding our outreach activities. We are currently developing educational strategies to teach local students, community members and landowners about the region’s unique biodiversity through trainings, workshops and presentations, while concurrently offering field classes, internships, and job training for university students studying biology, land management, and ecotourism, and by developing and disseminating web-based and print resources in Spanish.
Our long-term goals with regard to this project are to 1) improve the quality and extent of riparian vegetation and habitats for locally breeding and migratory populations of NMB and other wildlife in the Madrean Sky Islands region, 2) increase transboundary habitat connectivity for NMB and other wildlife by working on both sides of the international border, 3) increase the knowledge and capacity of local human populations in the region to effectively manage and restore habitat for NMB on private lands, 4) monitor the effects of restoration and management efforts in a manner than guides future efforts, and 5) reach those goals by fostering relationships based on trust and credibility with local human communities.
We hope this project will enhance prospects for NMB conservation in North America by improving the capacity of local ranchers to better manage their grazing lands, while restoring important riparian habitats for migratory birds in the border region and educating and engaging rural communities in Mexico about the ecological values of their local watersheds. 

Written By:  Lea Ibarra (CSS) and Kurt Vaughn (BRN)
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The Colectivo Sonora Silvestre (CSS) is an independent group of biology students from the University of Sonora and engineering students from the Technological University of Cananea focused on ecosystem conservation in Sonora. Within the Colectivo there are three main groups that work in the state of Sonora; the Alianza Mariposa Monarca (Monarch Butterfly Alliance), Grupo de Exploración de Manantiales en Sonora (Sonora Springs Exploration Group) and el Escuadrón de Rastreo de Fauna Silvestre (Wildlife Tracking Squad). We have gotten more familiar with their activities since three members of the CSS came up to Patagonia to participate in BRN’s Field School this year.

This self-organized, and largely self-funded, student collective is doing incredible work from wildlife monitoring, to quality assessments of natural spring ecosystems and documenting the presence of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) populations in Sonora. In addition, they are developing an environmental education program focused on habitat conservation in rural and urban schools along the Rio Sonora. This education effort has the twin goals of promoting biodiversity conservation and strengthening relationships between communities and their local flora and fauna.


The group hopes to continue its current projects of documenting the incredible biodiversity of Northern Sonora and hopes to expand its efforts to contribute to local environmental education and promote the sustainable management of natural resources and biodiversity. If you would like to supporting the work of these amazing students please consider giving a US tax-deductible donation via BRN’s portal (http://www.borderlandsrestoration.org/donate.html), please make sure to include a note that says “CSS”. 

Borderlands Restoration Network
presents an evening with 
Gary Nabhan
Author of
Food from the Radical Center: Healing our Land and Communities
EXCLUSIVE BOOK SIGNING EVENT
Followed by
FOOD · DRINKS · MUSIC
under the Tucson Evening Sky
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th, 5:30–7:30 P.M.
 at 
Mission Garden
946 W Mission Ln, Tucson, AZ 85745

Suggested Donation $20 at the door
R.S.V.P. requested by September 24th: info@BorderlandsRestoration.org or (520) 216 – 4148
Join Borderlands Restoration Network, a nonprofit located in Patagonia, AZ dedicated to building a regional restoration-based economy in the Arizona – Sonora borderlands, for an evening with author and famed ethnobiologist, Gary Nabhan.  Copies of his newly released book Food from the Radical Center: Healing Our Lands & Communities will be available for purchase and signing.
 
Borderlands Restoration Network 501c3
www.borderlandsrestoration.org
…working together to reconnect wildlife, land and people by promoting a restoration economy in our unique Arizona/Sonora borderlands region…