​BRN crews have also helped BCI plant agaves at a ranch near Dos Cabezas mountain range, grown by the Gila Watershed Partnership (GWP) located in Safford, AZ who also grow agaves through BCI’s Agaves for Bats program. These coordinated efforts are critical to accomplishing on the ground work in our borderlands region, along with the long term goal to care for agaves throughout the decade or so required to wait for agaves to flower, while monitoring bat activity of nectar-producing agaves.

BRN and one of our Sonoran partners, the Colectivo Sonora Silvestre, are working to strengthen community-based restoration of bacanora agaves through policy change by collaborating with universities, herbaria, government agencies, local policy regulators, non-profits, producers, and consumers in Mexico and the USA. Together we will evaluate connectivity of wild agave populations and impacts to pollinators on both sides of the border, supporting the creation of a cooperative, science-based, sustainability certification for bacanora production.

If you missed it, we are in the running to potentially fund our certification efforts with an award from Colorado State University Salazar Center’s Connectivity Challenge. The BRN Native Plant program is one of five finalists from across the nation competing for a $100,000 prize to fund projects that support landscape connectivity.​

One of the six wildlife cameras set up at Borderlands Wildlife Preserve monitors wildlife using the Casa Blanca Road underpass.  This camera just happens to be my least favorite to check. Its location is not easy to access forcing me to either bushwhack through thick allergy-inducing foliage, or walk along the highway with the anxiety-inducing traffic reminding me that I am far smaller than a sixteen wheeler.

​Frequently the reward for this effort is small, the camera images only showing a lonely raven or sunflowers blowing in the wind. Rarely though, the reward is well worth the effort giving me a glimpse into the lives of our wildlife and the daily paths chosen for survival.

​Most of my rewards come from the pictures collected on an SD card. A family of turkeys who found their way to the underpass or a stealthy bobcat moving almost unseen through the creek bed.  On my most recent outing, I had a rewarding in-person experience that rang home the importance of the underpass.

As I sat crouched checking the camera, a female white-tailed deer sprinted towards me from the opposite embankment headed towards the underpass. Upon seeing me she changed course and fled in the opposite direction. Seconds later her urgency was justified as a large coyote came bounding in my direction, also changing course due to my presence. They both hesitated and then deciding hunger and survival were of more importance than my presence. They took off to meet each other’s fate.

This experience left me pondering many things. If I hadn’t been there would the outcome of the chase be different? If the road hadn’t been there would the deer have had a better escape route? If the underpass hadn’t been there would there have been a car accident? I will never know the answers to these questions, but one thing I can say is that all three of us avoided the road that day.

​Avoiding those heavily traveled roads can save many, many lives and wildlife underpasses and overpasses have proven to save not only animals, but also the unfortunate people whose cars encounter them.

Communities around the world are considering the lives of migrating wildlife by constructing more overpasses and underpasses.  Driving less overall also saves animals' lives. As the COVID19 pandemic drags on studies are showing that tens of thousands of animals have been spared deaths on roads. The Patagonia community faces the potential for future mining traffic headed north passing directly by the Borderlands Wildlife Preserve.

More overpasses and underpasses along with making the choice to drive less will undoubtedly save lives. As the famous Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken“ says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

​I was first introduced to Borderland Restorations Network (BRN) through a tour I took with them in the summer of 2019. As a student in the horticulture field who is from a border area where I have seen the destruction that infrastructure from border wall construction and agricultural development can do, seeing BRN in action is nothing short of inspiring. To see an organization doing restoration horticulture in so many cool and different ways and working on really important projects motivated and assured me in any doubts I might have had about my career field choice.

​The agave restoration project was initially what hooked me, so I reached out for a possible internship to work and learn with BRN. I was lucky enough to be accepted for the position and have learned so much in my short time here. I have learned about how the “network” part of BRN is so crucial and how true restoration science is a collaborative effort of multiple, innovative approaches.

​This internship has shown me how rare and special the particular oaks native to Arizona are compared to oaks in different parts of the country, specifically, Quercus emoryi. The emoryi oak is native and prolific in the Santa Cruz County and is one of the oaks indicative of the Sky Island ecosystem. Using mapping resources from SEInet I have been able to familiarize myself a little more with the Madrean mountains area, understanding the habitats that oaks grow in as well as their importance in these unique Sky Island systems.