Mexican Parrot Reserve Expansion Boosts Spine of Continent Initiative

In 2000, Wildlands Network, Naturalia, Pronatura and other partners working in the Mexican portion of the Spine of the Continent protected some 6,000 acres encompassing the northernmost nesting area for endangered Thick-Billed parrots in western Chihuahua.

The protection occured via an innovative “conservation lease” with Ejido Tutuaca, aprivate agricultural cooperative. The lease was a 15-year agreement between the conservation groups and the ejido based on the buy-out of an imminent logging contract that would have clear-cut old growth parrot habitat on ejido lands.

For the past nine years, Wildlands Network and partners have worked with the ejido, located about 150 miles south of Douglas, Arizona, to secure the reserve, build eco-tourism cabins, and make yearly lease payments to ejido members in lieu of logging income. A key concern has always been that the ejido could, at the end of the lease agreement, return to its reliance on logging. However, Pronatura and its partners, leveraging the success of the original lease, have now reached a similar agreement with a neighboring ejido that expands the original acreage under protection to 7,500 acres.

This is a welcome achievement, but the legal combining of these acreages also resulted in both ejidos agreeing to protect all the acreage which means that concerns for the ejidos returning to logging for income after the lease expired have been extinguished. In addition, the clear benefits being acrued by the two ejidos from this protection plan have enabled Pronatura to promote similar lease agreements with other adjacent ejidos -- to the tune of what could be 250,000 acres of new, connected, permanently protected reserve. Not only would this protection ensure continued rebound of threatened Thick-Billed parrot populations, but it would also create a substantial core area benefitting numerous other endangered species, including jaguar and ocelot.

This habitat protection effort, once fully completed, will result in the connection of a large landscape vital to the implementation of the southern portion of the Spine of the Continent Wildway.