The Sky Island Restoration Collaborative

[Music] 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 and northeastern sonora mexico it is a treasured biodiversity hot spot recognized internationally [Music] 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 [Music] 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 cattle eats vegetation and it's on the mountainside and in the valleys and could be a problem copper well when they discovered compromise they needed the fuel to to produce the coffee so that they cut down all the trees on the mountains but just clear-cut so the chiricahuas were pretty deluded 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 centuries started to grow big time so the men were delighted the cattle company chiricahua cattle company uh put sheep and cattle and sometimes goats up on the hills and in a short period of time it pretty much denuded the hills so that what they had left was mountain-sized rocky and their ground compacted and when the rains came that soil washed off 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 because including 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 um 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 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 it 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 [Music] 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 voler clark 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 in 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 while 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 were actually running in places um that was a a place for mosquitoes when the mosquitoes came in there were fish that came in there 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 [Music] [Music] you

Channel: USGS

Views: 40,633

Keywords: usgs, science, Restoration economy, stewardship, biodiversity, ecohydrology, stakeholders, community involvement, partnership, human-nature relationship, border, Sky Island, restoration, U.S. Mexico border, southern border, U.S. border, Mexico border

Id: _5gf7_3bjGg

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022