Canyon and cliff that drains north out of northern Sierra del Carmen. (Raymond Skiles)

by Talli Nauman

Just occasionally, people transcend geopolitical, sector and other boundaries to make good news for habitat restoration. When this happens it is something worth celebrating.

A case in point is the vast but heretofore little-known El Carmen Corridor on the U.S.-Mexico border, which is the cover feature of an exquisite, photo-laden coffee-table book released Sept. 29, in Austin, Texas, at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference.

Transboundary Conservation: A New Vision for Protected Areas is a Mexico-based international collaboration about 28 peace parks the world over. It was produced by the cement company Cemex, Agrupación Sierra Madre, and Conservation International.

In its chapter on El Carmen, it details the striking achievement of a black bear population’s self-conducted return to colonize Texas from its last holdout in Coahuila, thanks to public-private partnerships involving stakeholders on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico line.

It also reveals that Mexico’s Cañon de Santa Elena Flora and Fauna Protection Area – the extreme southwestern piece of the tenure puzzle that makes up the gigantic El Carmen Corridor – was established primarily to protect the strategically crucial Rio Concho watershed.

If bear migration and protection of a seemingly obscure watershed appear at first glance to be vague or formless accomplishments of the corridor, it is necessary to look more carefully at their significance.

First, picture the corridor’s placement. It is a whale-shaped area overlapping the boot-heel of Texas. That means it’s located about halfway between the international border crossings of Ojinaga-Presidio and Ciudad Acuña - Del Rio. The corridor takes up about 38,500 square kilometers along the U.S.-Mexico borderline.

The area is among the border’s most remote and sparsely inhabited, as well as one of the most rugged and spectacular. It’s mostly very, very wild.

The Rio Bravo, a.k.a. the Rio Grande, enters El Carmen Corridor on its western edge just below the whale tail that consists of Big Bend Ranch State Park. The river divides the park from Santa Elena Flora and Fauna Protection Area to the south.

In the belly of the whale is Big Bend National Park where the river turns northward to flow by Texas’ Black Gap Wildlife Management Area. Both of them are across the water from Mexico’s federal Maderas del Carmen Flora and Fauna Protection Area, where Cemex has acquired conservation lands in consultation with Agrupación Sierra Madre.

To the southeast, at the eye of the whale, is the Serranía del Burro Private Protection Area, on the southwestern end of the corridor.

Mexican cattle ranchers formed the private protection area to restore habitat for important species, such as black bears, whose numbers were dwindling south of the border at alarming rates in the 1940’s and 1950’s. This successful venture, together with the existence of adjoining conservation areas, has resulted in black bear repopulation in Big Bend National Park and Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, as ongoing research by corridor supporters shows.

The enlargement of the bear habitat involves cooperation in both Mexico and the United States between property owners, non-profit organizations, federal, state, and local jurisdictions, including ejidos, which are Mexican federal trust-land units governed by the land users.

The intricate mesh of interests also can take credit for watershed conservation.

The presentation of the book coincided with Mexico’s repayment of its so-called water debt to the United States, under a treaty that mandates annual allocations of Rio Grande flows. Water users and administrators who shared a sigh of relief over that long-awaited benchmark could link it to Rio Concho watershed protection. That tributary is one of the Rio Grande’s most important.

Beyond the by-now obviously concrete accomplishments for the ecosystem, among which the bears and Rio Concho are only a few examples, El Carmen Corridor is a shining illustration of the subtle diplomatic force of peace parks.

More than once, the water shortages caused by drought and failures to practice comprehensive joint management in the Rio Grande Basin have engendered local battles over resources that have threatened to erupt in political crises for the United States and Mexico.

As U.S. and Mexican border governors contemplate such problems in the wake of their annual meeting this past week, the “Transboundary Conservation” book should be of service to them. Meanwhile its wealth of knowledge and its rich collection of nature photography by Agrupación Sierra Madre founder Patricio Robles Hill and other members of the International League of Conservation Photographers is here to inspire all the rest of us, too.

From El Carmen Corridor to the most famous transboundary conservation area, the U.S.-Canadian Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, to South Africa’s Kavango-Zambezi, and back to the Maya Tropical Forest on Mexico’s southern border, peace parks offer something to benefit everyone from armchair travelers to adventure tourism enthusiasts to foreign policy operatives.

For me, it is a source of pride that Mexico is the origin of this new book encouraging people to uphold these and other transboundary conservation initiatives.

Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is the Americas Program Associate at the International Relations Center. (talli@direcway.com).

This article originally appeared in Mexico City’s El Universal.