PARENT SESSION
Symposium #8: Linking the Leopold Legacy and Ecological Restoration in the Southwestern U.S. and Northwestern Mexico.
Organized by: W Forbes, C Meine, and C Curtin
Monday, August 5. 1:00 PM to 3:45 PM. Maricopa Meeting Room, TCC.
Revisiting and restoring the Rio Gavilan.
Forbes, William*,1, Fleming, William2, 1 University of North Texas, Denton, TX2 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
ABSTRACT- The Rio Gavilan watershed, located eighty kilometers west of Casas Grandes in Mexico's northern Sierra Madre Occidental, is important in the history of natural resource conservation. Upon 1936-38 visits, renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold thought it was the best picture of land health he had seen. The visits influenced Leopold's concepts of land health and the land ethic, most famously professed in his conservation classic A Sand County Almanac. Leopold also proposed collaborative research for the Rio Gavilan, proposing to use the area as a norm in a continent-wide study of land health. The proposal never went forward and the area has since been altered through roading, grazing, and logging. This presentation provides information on initial, small-scale watershed restoration efforts, including March 2002 watershed health survey results.
KEY WORDS: Leopold, History, Restoration, Mexico