By: Cholla Rose Nicoll, Borderlands Wildlife Preserve CoordinatorFor the past year Borderlands Wildlife Preserve has been monitoring wildlife with a series of six trail cameras. For the most part these cameras are set up in easy to access areas providing us with a glimpse into what animals are on the preserve, but only a limited view from these areas. We are happy to announce our view is about to expand and we will be adding more cameras for a total of 15! This will allow us to evenly distribute cameras throughout the preserve getting a clearer picture of what animals are present in more remote areas.  Image of a coyote taken at the BWP this fall. Another exciting development on the horizon for 2022 is a partnership between Borderlands Restoration Network, Sky Island Alliance (SIA) and the Patagonia Public Library. SIA will be providing wildlife trail cameras to the library for check out and use in their FotoFauna program. The FotoFauna program allows anyone with a wildlife trail camera to submit data to help track presence, absence, and seasonal movements of species in the Sky Islands of the U.S. and Mexico. I will be available for guidance in operating these publicly available cameras and hope to use them for youth education in Patagonia schools.  We look forward to sharing more beautiful pictures like these from this fall with you. More details on both projects will be coming soon so watch out for updates and invites to participate! We are happy to be able to share even more excellent photos with you throughout the coming year.
Happy 2022! Wildlife Monitoring at the BWP during 2021 - 2022, supported by the Wildlife Conservation, Climate Adaptation Fund, supported by funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The WCS Climate Adaptation Fund supports projects helping ecosystems adapt to climate change, including urban environments and projects incorporating joint mitigation and adaptation approaches. By: Perin McNelis, BRN Native Plant Program Assistant ManagerBetween September and December 2021, our Native Plant and Watershed Restoration Programs kept very busy with our largest seed collection season to date. Between our seed collections for commercial sale and nursery production as well as our collections for various grants and contracts for restoration projects on public and private lands, the team collected approximately 700lbs of bulk seed! We were incredibly lucky to have an abundant crop after record monsoon rains quenched the landscape and supported a robust harvest.  Volunteer, Kirstine Grace, collecting Crimson Bluestem (Schizachyrium sanguineum) seeds on Coronado National Forest land in the San Rafael Valley. The largest portion of our seed collection efforts this season was for a revegetation project in Mansfield Canyon in the foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains. The program brought on 10 seasonal seed collectors (two crew leads and eight crew techs, plus an intern that rotated between the nursery and seed collection crew) to spearhead this project. It was our fourth year conducting seed collection for this project in partnership with USDA Forest Service, with the goal of revegetating and controlling erosion on multiple sites after the removal of toxic tailings that were leaching from a few legacy mines into the local watershed, a tributary of Sonoita Creek and ultimately the Santa Cruz River.  The 2021 seed collection crew on the edge of the Patagonia Mountains and the San Rafael Valley on Coronado National Forest land. Photo credit: Cricket Dean. Program management scouted the Coronado National Forest lands surrounding Patagonia and identified robust populations of plants on the target species list for the project, they then monitored the phenology of the species at each site, observing when the plants were finishing flowering and going to seed and when the plants were at their “natural state of dispersal” with mature, ripened seeds ready to be collected. This careful planning informed the schedule and flow of the season. The crew was thoroughly trained in plant identification, field safety, and seed collection ethics so as to not harm or over harvest from plant populations.  Seed collectors, Olivia Diaz, Gabriel Gudenkauf, Karima Walker and Marsella Macias, practice grass identification during crew training. The crew then split into two groups with one lead and four techs each and took our vans out into the mountains each day to different beautiful sites in the Sky Islands covering as much ground as possible, and building genetic diversity into each collection by collecting from as many individuals in each population. Our fantastic crew collected over 460lbs of seed from 16 different species of native bunch grasses, as well as 12 different species of forbs from various locations in the Santa Rita Mountains, Patagonia Mountains, San Rafael Valley, Huachuca Mountains, Canelo Hills and Chiricahua Mountains. Sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri) was a favorite target species of the group as they loved climbing to beautiful vistas in search of this charismatic plant.
The crew collecting Sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri) seeds, also known as Desert spoon, on Coronado National Forest land in the Patagonia Mountains. Photo Credit: Cricket Dean. Additionally, we did smaller seed collections for contracts with USDA Agricultural Research Service and the United States Forest Service at the Wild Chile Botanical Area in the Tumacácori Mountains for research related to conservation of crop wild relatives, as well as for a contract with the National Forestry Foundation and Southern Arizona Quail Forever to be used in habitat restoration projects in conjunction with erosion control structures to support Montezuma Quail habitat in the Huachuca Mountains. We also collected seed for commercial use for seed sales and nursery production through Borderlands Nursery & Seed, and are excited to add some unique new species to our inventories in 2022!  Seed collector, Olivia Diaz, collects Rubber Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) on Coronado National Forest land in the Santa Rita Mountains. The Watershed Restoration Program collected seed for a few of their own projects as well, including a project supported by funding from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Section 6 grant that involves establishing native grasses after invasive species removal to support habitat for the endangered Beardless chinchweed (Pectis imberis), as well as for landscape-scale restoration projects that combine watershed restoration work with seeding for our Path of the Jaguar project supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Arizona Department of Water ResourcesWater Management Assistance Program.  Seeds collected and stored in the BRN Native Seed Lab. Finally, our staff harvested over 120lbs of native grass and forb seed from the farmed seed-increaser plot at Borderlands Nursery & Seed for seed production contracts with the Petrified Forest National Park, the Institute of Applied Ecology for Tonto National Forest.
As this seed collection season comes to a close, and the landscape transitions into winter, we are so grateful for the monsoon rains we received this summer that supported our fall harvest and for our incredible seasonal crew that made the scale of our collection season possible as well as fun! We were so lucky to have our own small staff joined by such a wonderful group of passionate, hilarious, observative, intelligent, adventurous, dependable, and caring individuals who brought renewed inspiration to our program, long term colleagues, and friends who care deeply about the BRN mission. |
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Physical Address:
320-B School Street Patagonia, AZ 85624 Mailing Address: PO Box 121 Patagonia, AZ 85624 |
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