A Shared vision for enhancing ecological resilience in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: The Sky Islands Restoration Collaborative

The Sky Island Restoration Collaborative (SIRC) is comprised of people living and working in the United States-Mexico borderlands that have self-organized to address shared goals of ecological restoration and improve the social, cultural, and economic well-being of communities (Norman et al., 2021b). This collaboration is founded on a recognized need to improve management of our shared geography for biodiversity and conservation (DeBano et al., 1995) and to maximize restoration impacts using available funding (Norman et al., 2021b). Our grassroots partnership organically embraces restoration practitioners, land and resource managers, and research scientists, with representation from agencies, government and non-governmental organizations, and educational institutions, across state and international boundaries of the Madrean Archipelago Ecoregion of North America (Figure 1). In this article, we describe SIRC’s integration of science and practice to sustain biodiversity, improve resilience to a changing climate, and re-establish an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture in the United States-Mexico borderlands.