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the madran archipelago echo region is
situated on the four corners of
southeast arizona and southwestern new
mexico united states as well as
northwestern chihuahua in northeastern
sonora mexico
it is a treasured biodiversity hot spot
recognized internationally
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within this echo region there are 50 sky
islands or insular mountain ranges of
the north american borderlands that can
isolate species who cannot withstand the
intermountain lowland valleys or seas
but offer a stack of biotic communities
that allow vertical migration annually
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other species use the corridor stepping
stone archipelago between the rocky
mountains and its plateaus and the
sierra madre plateau and its mountains
to migrate on its north-south axis
tucked within this magnificent and
valuable landscape the majority of u.s
citizens exist with household and per
capita incomes much lower than both
state and national levels
the majority of people living in rural
areas depend on ecosystems and related
biodiversity for subsistence security
and income
land use change driven by humans began
here about 200 years ago threatening the
forest the range aquatic habitats
pushing some vulnerable floor on fauna
to decline as urban areas sprawl out
i started by reading about the area the
past and what happened
and i learned that the
past management had in the past
history of this region was
three cattle
copper and cotton
now cotton you know uses a lot of water
in the desert
cattle why would cattle
vegetation
and it's on the mountainside and in the
valleys
copper
well when they discovered compromise
they needed the fuel to to produce the
copper so that they cut down
all the trees on the mountains but just
clear-cut
so the chiro-collars were pretty
delivered
and when they were denuded they opened
up to the sun the soil opened up and the
sun shone in and the grass seeds that
were in the ground maybe for centuries
started to grow
big time
so the men were delighted they the
cattle company chiropod cattle company
uh put
sheep and cattle and sometimes goats up
in the hills
and in a short period of time it pretty
much denuded hills
so that what they had left was
mountainsides between
rocky
and
their ground
compacted
and when the rains came
that soil washed off the bottom and as
the soil came down more and more each
year and deeper and deeper cutting
deeper and deeper
the the water tape table was in the
washes was dropping so that the land on
either side didn't get benefit from the
soil from the wet soil because it just
rushed through
and couldn't really penetrate the soil
for security vegetation
we had a
super dry
summer
year last year 2020
and 2019
we were down you know some of our
pastures to
about two inches of rain where we
normally get
15 14 15.
then came this year's monsoon
i say that
the wind started to blow and half my
ranch blew to new mexico
and then
came a super record monsoon
and we got 22 inches of rain
two three inch rains within four days
on land that had been dry and grazed
so the other half of my ranch
went on down these were canyon and
headed on over
to the san pedro river
that is why the sky island restoration
collaborative also known as cyrc was
formed
this grassroots partnership spans
administrative boundaries to conserve
both our nation's unique natural
heritage with deep commitment to
preserving minimal viable habitats by
restoring and protecting the remaining
wild places using low-tech natural
infrastructure and low-cost climate
adaptation solutions
the project that we're standing at here
we're just outside of the borderlands
wildlife preserve
we're about
12 miles as the raven flies from the
sonoran border to the south
and
the main focus of this particular
project is to connect
the
large swaths of protected public lands
of the coronado forest two districts of
the coronado forest with each other so
that wildlife
and plants have a corridor to move
across
and really that's the huachuca and the
patagonia's to the south and the santa
ritas which you can just see right then
peeking over the the side there
the work that we've been doing here uh
is erosion control structure work it's
very simple
a very simple
essentially reorganization of the
landscape in a slight way
that's almost intuitive
and has been practiced for many
millennia so this particular structure
was built to
stop that erosive action
and
uh try to rebuild
build up that soil capture that sediment
slow that water down increase
infiltration and allow for natural
revegetation
this is the most important quarter for
jaguars moving from mexico into the into
the united states it's also an extremely
important quarter uh for many other
species of black bear moves through here
between the mountain ranges bureau deer
do
this is an area of
extraordinary biological diversity
because it's a confluence of the sierra
madre to the south the rocky mountains
to the north very diverse
sky islands in between we get winter
rains from the west and summer rains
from east and all in between we have
species that depend on
the flora and the fauna to the north and
the south and range to the east in the
west
exceptionally high biological diversity
in the very scene that you can see me
behind behind me here there are 14
different threatened and endangered
species
that are known from this this little
watershed right in front of you and far
more when you get back away from the
from the stream into the mountains
behind us
an area of exceptional biological
diversity that was under exceptional
threat of development on the uh west
side of this highway uh there was a
place called three canyons that had been
planted
for uh 200 houses we bought 173
residential lots and our plan was to
sell 23 lots to raise the money to
protect the other 150 lots but now we've
gone far beyond that we've brought
hundreds of acres up to the to the north
and on this side of the highway
we now have about 1600 acres under
conservation easement and big plans to
do a lot more
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in 2014 restoration practitioners at
borderlands restoration network cuencalo
sohos and the sky island alliance began
working with land managers from the
national park service the forest service
bureau of land management u.s fish and
wildlife service the nature conservancy
and many private ranches in southern
arizona
and scientists from the u.s geological
survey to identify restoration research
and resource needs
using the search as a vehicle for
information sharing training and project
implementation funded by bat
conservation international
national fish and wildlife foundation
biophila foundation and the walton
family foundation
i first
was introduced to valere
clarke
via ron pulliam and we were all out at
the ranch
looking at the amazing
land management that they had been doing
there for years and the impacts of of
structures on her property we were with
a large group of agencies and we were
all sitting around a circle introducing
ourselves
and we went around and there were some
people that were studying
prairie dogs and some people that were
studying bats and agaves and
geology
and hydrology
and we all went around and introduced
ourselves and at the very end of the
circle was ron pulliam
and he said
you know this sounds like we're all
working on one big project
and we realized at that time that we
were and how beneficial it would be if
we worked together on this one big
project and so we all decided to work as
under this this
umbrella
of the sky island restoration
collaborative when ron pulliam retired
and moved to patagonia he wanted to
build on the work with cielo he had
become friends with josiah and valere
and he started borderlands restoration
and
his idea was to expand on the excellent
work that cuenca lozojos had been doing
then it grew from there it was actually
dan taylor
from the bat conservation international
that
knew all the players
and he was like
you guys are really doing some good work
here you guys should really
kind of
bring it together in a more cohesive way
and just
you know do a better job of advertising
the good work that you're doing
and at the time
i had worked for the park service so i
knew all of those players
but i had switched over to the forest
service at the coronado national forest
and so i saw all these people doing
these good things and i was like dang
the forest service is kind of left out
and i hate being left out
eat it
so we convened a meeting
and we thought we really are doing some
good work and we really need to
bring it together and make it bigger
and the only way we're going to be
successful at this is if we all work
together there's like no money for
restoration really
the only way we can make it work is to
bring everybody together
build on everybody's skills just
collaborate as much as we possibly can
and then take credit for it
so conservation in this area is all
about partnerships
these are big landscapes these are big
projects they're expensive projects they
require everything from people who know
about science to people who know about
real estate law et cetera so we build
partnerships we build coalitions we work
very closely with a number of federal
and state agencies and with a number of
other conservation organizations my name
is jeff kahn i've worked in
collaborative restoration for the last
15 years
first with the bureau of land management
and more recently with the national park
service
and by working collaboratively across
boundaries it allows the agencies to not
only share resources that they don't
necessarily have on their own but to be
more effective at managing landscapes
and habitats for wildlife by pooling our
resources and working across a larger
landscape and sharing those resources if
we all have a little bit to contribute
we're able to share those across
agency boundaries and work with private
landowners and non-profit organizations
to get that work done
these these collaborations between
show us the biggest picture it really
broadens our horizons it it connects
science
people in the universities
and the students that are working on
science and that's such a big part of
what we're doing so i think
it's really for cross-border
cooperation and science
and management on the land is most
important our work with the federal
agencies has been critical here we work
of course very closely with forest
service in terms this is foreign service
land out to the east and far service
land to the west we're trying to protect
this four square mile area uh between
the forest service land and connect the
washuka mountains to the santa rita
mountains two different wilderness areas
connected
fire service is a key partner we've also
worked with all the state agencies and
with four or five different
federal agencies but one of the special
relationships we have is with the u.s
geological survey and particularly the
unit of
usgs in tucson and the work of people
like laura norman
who have done the science behind the
conservation work that we're doing
projects are focused on planting native
vegetation and installing rock detention
structures to harvest the desert rain
and nourish new life
cyric scientists have proven that these
interventions can increase residence
time of flowing streams
allowing rainfall to infiltrate the
landscape recharge the aquifers and
increase downstream water availability
to naturally heal the sky islands
in addition the sediment retention can
increase water quality downstream and
sequester carbon from the atmosphere
this is a natural climate solution to
reduce storm surges that pose flood risk
to downstream residents control erosion
and gully formation and help communities
adapt to an increasing drought so i work
for the u.s geological survey and the
usgs is the science agency for the
department of interior we are not a land
managing agency like the blm is or
national parks but we do provide the
science for the interior and working
with the different partners in the sky
island restoration collaborative has
been really beneficial for us
because we have land managers that are
interested to collaborate and provide
their locations as outdoor laboratories
and restoration practitioners who are
willing to collaborate
and put structures into the channel
based on their training as practitioners
and so
the collaboration works out really well
for me because i have these wonderful
experiments to investigate
and the research that we've been able to
develop some of the
science journals and metrics associated
with structures and other restoration
has been valuable to them as they're
able to use those numbers to apply for
grant funding so it's been a
mutual
relationship that seems beneficial for
everybody
cyric is committed to building a
resilient landscape founded on
scientific research and restorative
action to reverse degradation and
conserve our resources using innovative
projects like the restoration
demonstrated at cienega san bernardino
begun by cuenca los ojos and the u.s
fish and wildlife service in the 90s
the sierra's hope was to grow a
landscape scale initiative address
social inequities by advancing a
restorative economy and improve quality
of life in the borderlands and in 2022
sierra is still growing strong with over
100 different partners developing
projects that share costs and benefits
of restoring hydrologic and biologic
processes
now search can become a prototype for
future natural infrastructure solutions
before i got to the air advanced water
harvesting group they had already done a
study a remote sensing study of the rio
san bernardino which is a river that
runs north to south
across the u.s mexico border on the
north side it's in
the san bernardino national wildlife
refuge on the south side it runs through
the host lands
and they had looked at
the sites of watershed restoration
structures the gabians themselves and
they saw that
using satellite imagery vegetation
greenness had
increased
over
the course of 25 years
while
the rest of the landscape was
experiencing a drought and vegetation
venus had decreased
now when i got to the group i took that
and i extended that research along the
river downstream and upstream of the
structure sites
and i found that
meditation greenness increases
up to five kilometers
downstream from these structures either
increases or stays the same
across the landscape
vegetation greenness is decreasing
because of these continued sort of
varied droughts it made a huge
difference
the
washes started running for longer
periods of time
the
vegetation came in
very quickly
the pools of water lasted sometimes all
year long in places and sometimes
we're actually running in places
um
that was a
a place for mosquitoes
when the mosquitoes came in there were
fish that came in their birds that came
in
bats
and then there were
deer more deer a little more mountain
lions i mean
the whole
system had started to heal itself
and
and create
a habitat that was very rich what
local state and federal governments and
private sector companies on both sides
of the border are coming together to
learn from the products of this action
and joining the search to help make a
difference not only in this resilience
project but being practically tested
insights that can be replicated around
the world in other eridifying
environments vulnerable to climate
change
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you