Fieldtrip to Bavispe, Sonora, Mexico. Wildlife crossings, roads and fauna

The north of Mexico has unique characteristics in its morphology where we can find the islands of the sky. These “islands” are a mountainous complex in which mountains crowned by lush pine and oak forests are separated by an “ocean” of grasslands and desert. Six biotic communities converge in this region: the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts together with the great plains, the complex mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Rocky Mountain chain and, finally, the Nearctic and Neotropical ecozones.
LACTWG members Mirna Manteca, Cecilia Aguilar and José Miguel Gabutti, belonging to the Wildlands Network NGO, monitored a new road in the municipality of Bavispe, where the objectives of this field trip were:

Visit the drainages proposed for adaptation to fauna passages through direct observation, capturing data on their characteristics and traces of fauna that potentially use them.

Observe the characteristics and current state of the road.

Report wildlife crossing the roads and run over during the journey.

It was found some drainages with the necessary characteristics to function as wildlife passages, however, not all have these characteristics. In which, it was observed that there are species using it as deer, peccary, coyote, birds and cats. Although the road is already finished, it does not have all the structures that make it up, such as the dividing fence and the ditches. Finally, two species run over were observed in the field trip, the first is the species of snake Rhinocheilus lecontei and Nasua narica.