Residents of the Rio Cocospera river valley and the town of Imuris were shocked to learn of a huge project already under construction in late 2023. This project is a brand new railway segment from the Imuris area to Nogales, but further east than the current railway, cutting through the beautiful, biologically important, and little-disturbed Rio Cocospera drainage.
The Mammals of Rancho El Aribabi fills an important gap in the detailed knowledge of the diversity and abundance of the mammals in the Sky Island region of the U.S. and Mexico borderlands. The multiyear camera trapping effort captures a thorough inventory and baseline of this private protected area and conservation ranch in the heart of a migratory corridor that allows movement north and south in the high latitude portion of the Sierra Madre.
We used data from eight years of camera trapping at Rancho El Aribabi, a cattle ranch and conservation property in northern Sonora, Mexico, to examine the ecology of the northern-most known breeding population of ocelots (Leopardus pardalis). Ocelots were found mostly in two discrete and disjunct areas: a riverine riparian canyon at just less than 1,000 masl elevation and along arroyos in an oak-mesquite savanna in the Sierra Azul at 1,266–1,406 masl.
This Sonoran lyresnake's eyes were bigger than its stomach!
This location is the northernmost record for this species so far.
Rancho El Aribabi is half of an hour east of Imuris and stretches (the long dimension - 10,000 acres total area) from the Rio Cocospera up into the Sierra Azul.
