Binational Community Monitors Wildlife Together Through Sky Island FotoFauna
In October 2020, Sky Island Alliance together with 16 founding partners including Saguaro National Park launched Sky Island FotoFauna to unite community scientists across the U.S.-Mexico border in wildlife monitoring to aid park management. The project seeks to document the monthly occurrence of 44 native species across the region using checklist data with photo vouchers submitted online by volunteers with continuously running wildlife cameras. Since the project launched, the program expanded to include 23 collaborating park and non-profit partners, 137 volunteers, over 300 independent camera locations, and over 3,590 monthly checklists from the U.S. and Mexico.
To launch the project, Sky Island Alliance staff provided in-depth wildlife-camera training to more than 100 undergraduate students and 180 community members spread across Sonora and Arizona. FotoFauna focused outreach to undergraduate students through lending libraries at the Universidad de la Sierra (Unisierra, Moctezuma, Sonora) and Universidad de Sonora (Unison, Hermosillo, Sonora), where biology club students (Protectores de la Sierra) get to check out one of 27 FotoFauna camera kits to use around their university or family ranches for a semester and receive monthly in-person support from Sky Island Alliance’s Sonoran wildlife biologist1. In addition, Sky Island Alliance provided 18 paid internships for students to participate in FotoFauna through the Path of the Jaguar Internship Program. FotoFauna interns came from the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program, from the Tohono O’odham Community College, University of Arizona, Unisierra, and Unison.
Following the success of FotoFauna lending library for students in Sonora, in October 2021, FotoFauna established the first U.S.-based wildlife camera lending program with a trial FotoFauna lending library at the Cooper Queen library in Bisbee, Arizona. With a long waiting list of eager community members, citizen scientists continuously check out their FotoFauna camera kits when it’s their turn and their data collection is underway with support of Sky Island Alliance and library staff. One community member refused to return a camera, but despite that minor setback, the project is working well as a way to reach members of the community who could not otherwise afford to purchase a wildlife camera of their own. The project expanded to include another community lending library at the Patagonia Library in Patagonia, Arizona in 2022 and another in Arivaca in 2024.
The monthly species presence and absence data is shared on the Sky Island FotoFauna dashboard (link: https://quietcreek.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/46f4e650f98648ccb5c61...). This tool is available for communities to use when conducting conservation planning in their neighborhood or to determine if the wildlife community is changing around them. The project is ongoing in 2024 with renewed support from the National Park Service Southwest Border Resources Protection Program and all are welcome to participate in collecting data or learning from the results.