Today, the CEC released its Conservation Assessment for the Big Bend-Río Bravo Region: A Binational Collaborative Approach to Conservation, which identifies 29 priority conservation areas in a region straddling the United States-Mexico border that includes 11 different protected areas in the states of Texas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua. This region features unique, highly diverse arid and semi-arid habitats inhabited by rare and endangered plants and animals, and provides a vital migratory stopping point for many species of birds and animals on their journey across the continent.
The improved resilience for this area of North America that will result from the implementation of the recommendations of the Assessment is being celebrated by the CEC as part of its 20thanniversary. The cooperative, multi-stakeholder approach used to identify conservation priorities in the Big Bend-Río Bravo region included scientists, government experts, private landowners, and communities and is symbolic of the CEC's 20 years of collaborative work on a wide array of environmental policy issues.
Taking input from those who live and work in the Rio Grande region, along with advice from outside experts, the Assessment identifies conservation targets for, and threats to, the grassland, mountainous, aquatic, and riparian habitats of this vast transboundary landscape, including the Rio Grande itself. Drawing from the recommendations and priorities identified in the Assessment for the region, the CEC is supporting restoration and monitoring actions in selected tributaries and a landscape-wide monitoring program throughout the region.
Recommendations of the Assessment:
The Assessment's ultimate goals are to:
Quick fact: When Big Bend National Park was established on 12 June 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States of America wrote to President Manuel Ávila Camacho of Mexico, "I do not believe that this undertaking in the Big Bend will be complete until the entire park area in this region on both sides of the Rio Grande forms one great international park." Seventy years later, the pace of the current binational efforts picked up in 2010, with a statement from the US and Mexican governments to "work through appropriate national processes to recognize and designate Big Bend-Río Bravo as a natural area of binational interest."
The report can be found online at: http://www3.cec.org/islandora/en/item/11495-conservation-assessment-big-bend-r-o-bravo-region-binational-collaborative-approach
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