The View from Sapsucker Woods

Last February, four Lab colleagues and I paid homage to a place of ornithological lore, hoping to see one of Mexico’s most beautiful and vulnerable birds. Little did we know as we left the snow banks of Ithaca, New York, how much we would learn from our partners south of the border. Sixteen hours after departing, we were in sleeping bags under tall pines of the Sierra Madre Occidental, in the state of Sinaloa. Guided by leaders of Pronatura, Mexico’s premier conservation organization, we camped at Barranca Rancho Liebre. Many early ornithologists, and more recently a generation of birders, had made the pilgrimage to these awe-inspiring mountains in search of the Tufted Jay (Cyanocorax dickeyi), a rare bird not protected anywhere in its tiny range.

Drawing of Tufted Jay by John W. Fitzpatrick/CLO

We made this trip to foster our growing bond with public and private Mexican conservation organizations, especially CONABIO, the agency charged with acquiring and distributing data about Mexico’s rich biodiversity. Sleeping in the tent alongside us was that agency’s chief ornithologist, Humberto Berlanga, and its director, Dr. Jorge Soberón. All of us wanted to see the Tufted Jay, but I had an additional motive. I was anxious to grill these Mexican government officials about how we could help protect such a spectacular and localized bird. Specifically, I assumed, the answer must include a conventional habitat preserve—perhaps a national park or federal wildlife refuge. Could we encourage or facilitate such a preserve?

Howling wind and driving rain pelted our tent all night long, courtesy of the mild El Niño in force this winter. We discussed habitat conservation in rural Mexico over coffee and burritos the following morning, and over the next two days our colleagues treated us to a remarkable short-course on land tenure in rural Mexico. Beginning as far back as the Aztecs, communal ownership of land has been a Mexican way of life. During the 1800s large commercial interests increasingly took over the countryside, but a new constitution in 1917 again declared the rural landscape to be communal property, managed by local collectives known as “ejidos” (pronounced ay-heedos). In the Sierra Madre Occidental, the villagers (“ejidatarios”) began making their living by cutting their great pine forests for timber sales, and the practice has continued to this day. Saving the Tufted Jay, then, requires devising new sources of income for Ejido El Palmito, and others like it, whose economies depend entirely on their natural resources.

Enter the creative partnership between for-profit enterprises and conservation organizations. Spearheaded by an outdoor adventure company based in Mazatlan (www.mazatlan-ecotours.com), and assisted by Pronatura and CONABIO, El Palmito has contracted to protect its pine trees in exchange for payments that match its expected timber revenues over the next 20 years, and discussions are underway to expand both the extent and the duration of this arrangement. Other ejidos nearby are joining in. The challenge now rests with the partnership to generate enough income to make the payments. It is a bold and difficult enterprise, but one that bears the chief hallmark of 21st-century conservation the world over: protection of the natural landscape must become more than an externally mandated luxury, it must be a visceral necessity for the local, private economy.

My colleagues and I can vouch for the gold that makes it worth traveling to those ridgetops in the Sierra Madre Occidental. First at great distance down a spectacular ravine, then finally in the pines right over our heads, we marveled in awe at the splendid bird we had come so far to see. The Tufted Jay will survive, not in exclusive preserves removed from the local economy, but in expansive forests that provide that economy. If you can possibly go see for yourself, I promise that you’ll never forget it.

—John W. Fitzpatrick, Louis Agassiz Fuertes Director

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Miyoko Chu, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-2451. email: mcc37@cornell.edu