The Summer of Agave Love

By: Francesca Claverie, Native Plant Program Manager
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During the summers of 2020 and 2021, Borderlands Restoration Network (BRN) is contracted with Bat Conservation International (BCI) to grow out and plant 1,750 Agave palmeri’s from seeds collected from southern Arizona to increase food availability for nectar-feeding bats Leptonycteris yerbabuenae (Lesser long-nosed bat) and Choeronycteris mexicana (Mexican long-tongued bat). So far this year, BRN has planted over 700 of these agaves grown in our nursery in locations including, Tucson through a partnership with the Agave Heritage Festival, in Douglas at the Bisbee-Douglas Jewish cemetery, in Sierra Vista at Fort Huachuca, and at the Babacomari Ranch in Elgin.

To improve the chances of survivability due to sunburn, drought, and javelina attack, young agaves are installed with reinforced fencing around the base of the plant to prohibit digging from animals looking to eat their juicy bases, and shade cloth or burlap to protect the leaves. ​​​

​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.

These efforts on the U.S. side of the border are coordinated with plantings of agaves in both Sonora, Mexico and Nuevo Leon, in northeastern Mexico, where a different endangered species of nectar-feeding bats, Leptonycteris nivalis (Greater long-nosed bat), migrate.

Restoring agaves in our borderlands region is critical as they disappear from the landscape with increased production of the regional agave distillate, bacanora. To address threats to bats and to agaves, including the sustainability of bacanora production, policy changes need to incentivize practices that prevent further ecological degradation and restore nectar landscape connectivity, while celebrating regional food heritages and supporting restorative economies.

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.​