The Madrean Archipelago Biodiversity Assessment (MABA) is a project of Sky Island Alliance (SIA), a non-profit conservation organization based in Tucson, Arizona. The project, principally sponsored by a grant from the French-based Veolia Environment Foundation http://www.fondation.veolia.com/en/ is an ambitious effort to document the biodiversity and to preserve these biologically rich environments of the Sky Islands region.This third major MABA expedition documenting the unique plants and animals, is an eight-day trip to the Sierra la Madera (formerly Oposura) near Moctezuma in central Sonora, 120 miles south of the Arizona border city of Douglas. Partners for this expedition are the Universidad de la Sierra (Moctezuma), the Universidad de Sonora (Hermosillo), and the Reserva Forestal Nacional y Refugio de Fauna Silvestre Ajos-Bavispe (Ajos-Bavispe National Forest and Wildlife Reserve), led by Sky Island Alliance. A group of twenty-five scientists and students, about halffrom the United States (from as far away as North Carolina) and half from Mexico (from as far away as Mexico City), as well as four staff from Mexico’s Commission of Natural Protected Areas, will travel in a convoy of about a dozen 4-wheel drive vehicles to access this rugged area to accomplish the biological surveys. Read More
