A coyote and a badger use a culvert as a wildlife crossing to pass under a busy California highway together. Coyotes and badgers are known to hunt together.
🎥Peninsula Open Space Trust
Come along with me on my carnage (I mean course) check this morning. What should be one of the most beautiful golf courses in the country is being destroyed by herds of javelina. If anyone has a contact in AZ state govt that can help us find a solution please pass it along.
BREAKING: the famous wild jaguar named El Jefe who lived in Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains from 2011-2015 has reappeared through remote camera detection 7 years later in central Sonora, Mexico. He has traveled hundreds of miles & crossed the border twice.
BREAKING: Today, for the first time ever wolves were released into the wild in Colorado. Let’s wish these three male and two female wolves good luck after this historic attempt to reestablish a healthy population in the state.
Breaking News: The Forest Service says it will trigger the land exchange of sacred Oak Flat to mining giant Rio Tinto on January 15th, five days before Biden takes office. This is Apache holy ground and it’s destruction is an act of cultural genocide.
A bobcat and a coyote call a precarious truce to sip from a backyard watering hole in Arizona.
Come for the sound of wildlife sipping, stay for the third species that disrupts the peace.
When you think about the U.S.-Mexico border you should think about this family of wild black bears & their favorite swimming hole that sits near the line between Arizona and Sonora.
Our
#BorderWildlifeStudy
cameras in southeast Arizona recently documented a black bear at the wall — distressed and pacing over the course of 3 hours. It’s a reminder of why we do what we do. Stay tuned in 2024 as we continue to advocate for wildlife passages and no new wall.
This bear paced the border wall for three hours in distress. Cut off from millennia-old pathways that connect mountains and streams and springs and bears to life itself. This is the now-gone wild world. The freedom to roam is severed. Life is walled.
Behold mamma coati and her six coati kittens roaming a Sky Island mountain range at the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. The Sky Islands Archipelago is a world biological diversity hot spot as well as hot spot for total cuteness.
One of the cutest things I’ve ever found on my remote cameras in the Arizona borderlands is this coati mama and her coati kittens at a shallow creek in the Chiricahua mountains.
To ring out the old & herald the new, I’ll end 2022 with my most viral tweet: a common interspecies partnership between coyote and badger that reminds us that collaboration of all kinds is possible. Another world is possible.
🎥Peninsula Open Space Trust
When you think about the U.S.-Mexico border you should think about this family of wild black bears & their favorite swimming hole that sits near the line between Arizona and Sonora.
Please know that the borderlands are beautiful, biodiverse & wild. We need to keep it that way.
Took my son to find one of the rarest flowers in the world: a desert orchid that blooms in the Arizona borderlands among white oaks, cholla cactus and prickly pear. This is the Coleman’s coral root. Only two hundred individuals known to exist on the planet. We saw 17.
Be. Still. My. Heart! An ocelot kitten was photoed on a remote camera in Texas!
According to biologists at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, which sits on the border with Mexico, this kitten joins a recent “baby boom” of ocelots on the refuge over the past two years.
Breaking: Judge Steven Logan has denied an Apache injunction to halt destruction of Oak Flat by mining giant Rio Tinto.
He quoted a case saying, "The exclusive right of the U.S. to extinguish Indian title has never been doubted. And whether it be done by treaty, by sword ...
BREAKING: In light of Biden's victory the Trump admin is fast tracking the Oak Flat Land Exchange in Ariz to deliver the land, & all the sacred cultural sites of the Apache, to mining giant Rio Tinto before the new admin takes office.
Media, DM me for scoop/footage/photos.
The sultry sounds of bobcats down to mate are not soon forgotten. Check out the head-bobbing yowls, rapid tail twitching & awkward pauses. The female is the gray cat initiating vocalization. The male is the stockier rufus.
📽️Robyn Sloan (see his other videos on Vimeo!)
Come along with me on my carnage (I mean course) check this morning. What should be one of the most beautiful golf courses in the country is being destroyed by herds of javelina. If anyone has a contact in AZ state govt that can help us find a solution please pass it along.
Mountain lion mama and her three beautiful kittens spotted by a remote camera at Oak Flat, Arizona, a sacred site of the Apache threatened to be utterly destroyed by Rio Tinto / Resolution Copper for a massive copper mine.
#ProtectOakFlat
🎥 Arizona Mining Reform Coalition
For our Christmas tree we’ve been using the same dried out, 10-foot-tall desert agave flower stalk the last couple years. We picked it up after it fell over years ago after feeding thousands of bats and humming birds.
A wild jaguar crossing the desert, spotted on a trail camera in northern Mexico by the Northern Jaguar Project. The current northern range of jaguars stretches from Sonora, Mex into the Sky Island Mountains of Arizona and New Mexico. They cross the desert to reach new mountains.
Oak Flat in Arizona is a sacred site of the Apache set to be destroyed by Resolution Copper. What makes it sacred? One example: Water pours out of rocks from an ancient aquifer and feeds an otherwise arid desert, spawning unbelievably rich biodiversity and cultural connection.
For 2 years I watched a borderlands black bear cub grow up on 4 of my remote wildlife cameras. I named the cub Monsoon after watching videos of it relishing swims in monsoon pools.
Monsoon is now roaming solo. The borderlands are wild and wonderful.
Oak Flat in Arizona is a sacred site of the Apache set to be destroyed by Resolution Copper. What makes it sacred? One example: Water pours out of rocks from an ancient aquifer and feeds an otherwise arid desert, spawning unbelievably rich biodiversity and cultural connection.
The American pika is roughly the size of a large — and adorable — baked potato. But unlike the baked potato the pika is fierce, it’s survival is threatened by modern civilization and its squeak-roars mash up gorgeously to Freddy Mercury.
A bobcat and a coyote call a precarious truce to sip from a backyard watering hole in Arizona. Then the javelinas appear. Come for the sound of wildlife sipping, stay for the peccaries pushing in.
Behold mamma coati and her six coati kittens roaming a Sky Island mountain range at the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. The Sky Islands Archipelago is a world biological diversity hot spot as well as hot spot for total cuteness.
One of the highlights of my life was naming this chicken-poaching bobcat kitten Mr. Murderbritches and “translating” his growls on video. This cat’s wild spirit then went viral and inspired millions to be feisty as hell.
The gold medal in the prestigious international competition "Bird photographer of the year 2021" was awarded to Alejandro Prieto for his photo of a roadrunner stopped in its tracks by the U.S.-Mexico
#borderwall
Witness and take notes! This is one of the most endangered sexy-time dances on the planet. The female California condor (tag 9) looks upon her longtime travel partner & mate (tag J3) as he sways with a slow, sultry wings-out dance.
📽️Zion National Park
FYI, all plants capture CO2 & much of it goes back into the atmosphere as they decay.
But when a saguaro dies that CO2 is transformed into an inorganic mineral (caliche) that is captured for geologic time in the ground.
We must protect cactus forests.
“In the year 2023, you hear less about how nature is healing and more about how nature is fighting back.
First, it was the orcas…
Now, it’s the javelinas, furry pig-like mammals that live in the Southwest.”
Breaking: Newly released footage shows a wild jaguar in Sonora, Mex. just 3 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
📽️Ganesh Marin, doctoral student at University of Arizona
Nighttime at a spring near the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona: black bear with her two nursing cubs, a young mountain lion, a gray fox, a great horned owl and a ringtail.
A new trail camera video of a wild jaguar in southern Arizona has people wondering: Is this one of the cats we already know about or a new individual? Based on rosette analysis it’s a new cat. In this image, from top to bottom is Mystery Cat, Sombra and El Jefe.
Protesters have defeated Ariz. Gov Ducey’s container wall construction. Everyday Arizonans stepped up, beat back the machines, day & night, in snow & sunshine. They brought peace back to this valley. The monster of racism, fear mongering & ecocide is subdued—for now.
A 2021 study found that saguaro cactus flowers bloom first on the east side of saguaro crowns and then spread radially in a counterclockwise direction as the season progresses. This is the first documentation of any flowering plant doing so. But why?
A gray fox and a spotted skunk traveling together outside Denver, Colorado. What's the story with this wild duo?
📽️Robyn Sloan (check out her amazing videos on Vimeo!)
... by purchase, by the exercise of complete dominion adverse to the right of occupancy, or otherwise, its justness is not open to inquiry in the courts."
Oak Flat is set to be transferred to Rio Tinto as private property for mining on March 11th.
Never forget: The survival of the American pika is threatened by modern civilization and its squeak-roars mash up gorgeously to Freddy Mercury. Turn it up.
My kid was reading Ranger Rick this morning and yells to me: “this is that spot y’all helped get rid of that border wall. Look, the ocelots can travel and connect again!”
"The photos of this potentially new jaguar were taken after the shipping container border wall was removed. The wall had invaded a jaguar migration corridor in the Huachuca Mountains."
Scientists have discovered an unidentified beetle in an ephemeral pool in Australia that walks upside-down on the underside of the water's surface. Watching this seems to turn the aquatic world on its head.
Read the abstract of the study here:
Breaking: A federal court ruled 6-5 that multinational mining giant Resolution Copper’s proposed destruction of Oak Flat, an Apache sacred site, is not subject to fed laws protecting religious freedom. Apache Stronghold plans to appeal to Supreme Court.
Lots of other interesting critters visit this borderlands trail camera: coyote, coati, bear, gray fox, northern goshawk, ringtail, deer, Mexican spotted owl eating a bat, turkey vulture, Gould's turkey, and western spotted skunk, to name a few.
And then there is this golden eagle swimming in the same spot as the bear after a late spring snow earlier this year. The Arizona-Sonora, Mexico borderlands are truly spectacular with wildlife.
Two orphaned javelina babies that were brought to the Tucson Wildlife Center recently because they were unable to be reunited with their herd. They plan to raise them in captivity with other javelinas until they can be released as a new herd. Long live blended families!
For 18 months I watched this bear cub grow up in the U.S-Mex. borderlands on remote cameras. I named the cub after the summer rains that bless the Sonoran Desert. Monsoon navigates an unbelievably biodiverse world being cut in half by new border walls.
At Camp Ocelot the last three days where protesters have stopped all construction of Gov Ducey’s shipping container wall across the Coronado National Forest day and night, rain, snow or sunshine. Protesters have held this illegal wall at bay for three weeks now.
Interspecies drama from a New Mexico remote camera: An endangered Mexican gray wolf in the Gila returns to munch on a carcass and is blocked by a big ol' sleeping bear
#bearspreading
like he owns the place. P.S. what do bears dream about? Any ursine oneirologists on Twitter?
This is the top of "Monument Hill," a sacred site to multiple tribes, that
@DHSgov
is dynamiting right now to build the
#borderwall
. It's part of the historic homeland of the O'odham. Apache are buried here. Trump waived the Native American Graves Protection Act to allow this.
This beautiful and rare example of a wild jaguar in the snow is of Yo'oko in Arizona's Huachuca Mountains in 2017. He was name by students at Hiaki High School at the Pascua Yaqui Pueblo near Tucson. Yo'oko means jaguar in the Yaqui language. This is a good reminder that...1/
Some years ago an Ariz. 4th grader found a dead javelina near his home. He slapped a remote camera on it thinking he’d share footage of coyotes eating it at his school sci-fair. What he found was way cooler. I was honored to help with this vid.
Dr. Justin Schmidt, renowned entomologist & poet of wild pain, has left us. He traveled the globe stinging himself to create his insect pain index. He had a huge heart & love for the desert. Here he is handing my kid a giant hairy desert scorpion.
I’d like to remind folks that while El Jefe left Arizona for Sonora, Mexico, this other handsome fella, Sombra, has called Arizona home since at least 2016. Here is footage I got of him on one of my remote cameras in 2017. He’s been here nearly 6 years.
Moon, my partner in crime, my ride-or-die dude, is undergoing surgery this morning to have a tumor removed. Just dropped him off. He is wild as a coyote, strong as mule deer and sweet as agave nectar. Fingers crossed all goes well.
Breaking: a coyote sends a special farewell message to Ariz. Gov. Ducey and his damaging, pathetic and illegal shipping container border wall. It’s a deuce for Ducey.
I try to hide the more depressing realities of the work I do from my kid. I want him to understand but also have hope. Now that we’ve stopped Gov Ducey’s wall I took him to see what petty tyrants will do to the poor & the wild & explained how we stared down the machines and won.