We are a GRASSROOTS, landowner-driven nonprofit organization attempting to implement ecosystem management on nearly one million acres of virtually unfragmented open-space landscape in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

     Our goal is to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse, flourishing community of human, plant and animal life in our borderlands region.

      Together, we will accomplish this by working to encourage profitable ranching and other traditional livelihoods, which will sustain the open space nature of our land for generations to come.

The Malpai Borderlands area (click here for map) includes the San Bernardino Valley, the Peloncillo Mountains, the Animas Valley and the Animas Mountains. It is roughly pyramid shaped, with the base of the pyramid beginning just east of Douglas, Arizona along the Mexican Border to just west of Antelope Wells, New Mexico. The apex is just south of Animas, New Mexico.

With elevations ranging from 3500 to 8500 feet, the Malpai is a diverse area of mountains, canyons, valleys and riparian corridors. Several rare, threatened, and endangered plant and animal species are found here. It is the only place in the U.S. where Gould's turkey and white-sided jackrabbits occur naturally. It is also home to popular big-game species such as Coues deer, mule deer, pronghorn and Desert Bighorn sheep.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this huge landscape is that fewer than 100 human families reside on it. Many of the families who live here have been here for generations. Except for two small wildlife preserves, this is cattle ranching country. As ranchers, we have been concerned about a key resource we depend on for our livelihoods and way of life - the diminishing quality of grasslands for grazing. Fragmentation of the landscape, beginning with the subdivision of some ranches in our area, has also been a looming threat.

We formed a nonprofit organization to bring ranchers, scientists, and key agencies together, and today the Malpai Borderlands Group now carries out a series of conservation programs and activities, including land restoration; endangered species habitat protection; cost-sharing range and ranch improvements; and land conservation projects.

We invite you to explore our website and learn more about our efforts.

The 2010 Annual Science Conference was held in Douglas, AZ, on January 5th at the New Best Western Inn. Approximately 110 people attended. On January 6th, members of the Science Advisory Group met with staff and board members at the MBG Office.

Executive Director Bill McDonald opened the January 5th meeting with a welcome and announcements. He then introduced our keynote speaker, Dr. Tom Swetnam, the Director of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Dr. Swetnam addressed the issue of climate change and its effects on wildland fire, with respect to wildfire severity, fire use and prescribed fire. Dave Gori, an ecologist with The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico followed with a description of the Southwest Climate Change Initiative, an integrated framework to assist in adaptive planning and management with respect to climate change. Myles Traphagen, MBG’s ecological monitoring specialist, closed out the morning agenda by summarizing what we have learned from 15 years of monitoring data. These data clearly demonstrate that climate is the dominant ecological driver in our Borderlands ecosystems.

The afternoon session began with Dr. Robin Reid, Director of the Center for Community-based Conservation at Colorado State University, describing several successful collaborative planning and management programs, both here and abroad. Dr. Nathan Sayre and Dr. Lynn Huntsinger (both from the University of California at Berkeley) presented the results of their research on conservation easement effects in the Malpai Borderlands. Dr. Richard Knight (from the Department of Forest, Range and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University) spoke of the impact Aldo Leopold’s visits to Mexico’s Sierra Madre on Leopold’s