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The Big Bend-Rio Bravo Initiative: Trans-boundary Landscape Conservation in the Chihuahuan Desert
The borderlands of the Chihuahuan Desert in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo (RGB) and the Big Bend region have one of the highest levels of biodiversity and endemic species among the world’s arid and semiarid ecosystems. This large binational area, comprised by a total of eleven protected areas in Texas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua offers a unique opportunity for conservation because of its isolation from human settlements and the unfragmented nature of its landscape. In recent years, federal and state agencies in Mexico and the U.S., non-governmental organizations, and natural resource experts have nurtured public-private partnerships and worked to over-come obstacles to trans-boundary landscape conservation. The Big Bend-Río Bravo Initiative holds a bi-national vision for strategic landscape conservation and adaptive management of natural resources along a significant portion of the U.S-Mexico border in Texas, including 300 miles of the Rio Grande and approximately 3.3 million acres of protected areas in both countries. The goals of this initiative are to conserve and enhance ecosystems and the services they provide for local citizens, enhance opportunities for communities to connect with nature and engage in conservation efforts, to improve the resiliency of native plant and animal communities, and to increase the conservation capacity and knowledge of academic and civilian communities in both countries. This effort resulted in a consensus-based analytical framework and methodology that identified and described conservation targets, priorities, recommendations and technical support, to guide community and regional conservation planning, design, and implementation within this large transboundary landscape.