Frontera NorteSur November 2002

The Sky Islands are located in southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northern Mexico.  This region is ecologically unique because it is the crossroads of the temperate Rocky Mountains and the tropical Sierra Madre Occidental, as well as the meeting place of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts.  About 40 small mountains, and some not so small, arise within a sea of rolling grasslands and deserts, hence the name Sky Islands.  In New Mexico, the most prominent Sky Islands are the Peloncillos, Animas, and Big Hatchets, all of which contain Wilderness study areas.  The combined topographic, geological and climatic diversity provides habitat for a myriad of plants and animals.  The bottoms of the mountains and surrounding landscape are composed of grassland or desert shrub, but as you ascend the mountains, the vegetation changes to oak grassland, then coniferous forests.  In fact, with a light pack you can climb from the southwestern deserts to “Canada” in a matter of hours, ecologically speaking that is! 

The Sky Island region contains more than half of the breeding bird species in North America and more than 4,000 kinds of plants.  In addition, they provide habitat for unusual and charismatic species such as jaguar, javelina, coatamundi, black bear, bighorn sheep, mountain lion, elegant trogan, thick billed parrot, Gould’s turkey, sulfur bellied flycatcher, and goshawk.  Less known but equally exotic are Jarrow’s spiny lizard, bunch grass lizard, twin spotted rattlesnake, ridge-nosed rattlesnake, and the green rat snake.  Coupled with this is a diversisty of amphibians, insects, and other invertebrates.  Scientists, naturalists, and bird watchers come from all over the world to study and “play” in this area of great biodiversity.  In fact, the American Museum of Natural History established a permanent field station in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona that has hosted hundreds of biologists and ecologists over the years.

Pull out an atlas of North America, and look at the Sky Islands in the context of the continent as a whole.  You will quickly see that they are stepping stones in a mountain chain that stretches from Central America to Alaska. They are an integral part of a continental corridor connecting biological diversity.  They are individually unique, and yet they are part of the greater whole.  They are truly wildlands, and Wilderness abounds within them.