SIAC and Los Fresnos

SIAC, Students Integrating Academics and Conservation, is a group that has been funded since the spring of 2006 by various UA affiliates in order for them conduct and carry out their research in the surveying of various flora and fauna.

The group, has taken eight trips since receiving more that $5 thousand dollars from the UA Foundation, to Los Fresnos preserve in Sonora, Mexico. Los Fresnos is located on the Arizona-Sonora border and has provided a unique experience for students to study diversity of organisms in different habitats.

The group usually stays in a fifteen person ranch house when down in this border town conducting their studies.

Emilie Snell-Rood is the head member of this project and is the person who applied for funding, came up with the ideas, and has kept the group running. “I did come up with everything, I kinda came up with the idea about 2 and a half years ago” said Snell. Her responsibilities range from surveying work of birds and insects in the area, to the initial organization of the people in the group, as well as contacting other conservation groups in the area, finding money for the research, and organizing trips that would eventually lead to over 50 researchers traveling to Los Fresnos over the past two years.

“I had to peak the interest of students and other conservation groups in the area at first, and that was difficult” said Snell, who is leaving Arizona soon for a post-doctoral position in Indiana.

“It was interesting doing a lot of our field work on the border. We got to interact with a lot of students, as well as Mexican conservation groups working along the border. It was just a really interesting experience. Driving around on the ranch you would constantly see patrol or trucks dropping off or picking people up,” said Snell.

“It changed the work we did in a couple of ways. Completely independent from our research it was just interesting to see the Mexican side of the border and watch migrants get dropped off at night, and walking through the ranch during the day. People along the ranch seemed much more sympathetic to the cause,” said Snell.

She continued, “as far as our work it was interesting to see the cross border conservation. It’s a totally different view, like we are interested in things that are rare in Arizona, but a lot of those things (flora and fauna) are common in Sonora, Mexico. And its reverse in Mexico, they’re really excited about things like a red breasted nut hutch, which are really common in the US but they only have about four records of them in Sonora.”

“This one line (the border) just seems to create all these different priorities for the different groups, we are looking for different things based on their rarities,” said Snell.

Even with Snell-Rood leaving soon, her responsibilities’ will be passed on to a younger generation of conservationists.

To learn more about the group and their mission, visit their website at: www.eebweb.arizona.edu/SIAC

All photo's courtesy of SIAC and Emilie Snell-Rood,
given with permission to publish