10 Basic Birdwatching Tips
By Jonathan Vargas and Claudia Guzmán This article was translated by Oscar Gómez 1) Binoculars Choose the one that fulfill your requirements. The most recommendable measures are 8×42, 10×42 or 10×50. 2) Bird field guides Choose the guide that covers the region where you live or want to watch birds, preferably that includes distribution maps. […]
Coastal Solutions Project in Bahia de Todos Santos
By Jonathan Vargas Photo by Bryan Gerardo and Jonathan Vargas Translated by Óscar Gómez and Antonieta Valenzuela Bahía de Todos Santos Shorebird Reserve Bahía de Todos Santos, located in Ensenada, Baja California, is a site of ecological importance on which thousands of migratory shorebirds depend throughout the year, including species of worldwide conservation interest, such […]
Ecosystem Services Provided by Bats
By Jorge Andrade Chiropters, commonly known as bats, are an order of mammals with the fascinating ability to fly. Bats are the only mammals able to fly! Bats are quite a wide and numerous order, with approximately 1411 species (Burgin et al., 2018) and the second largest order of mammals. From an ecological point of […]
Management Units for Wildlife Conservation
By Ricardo Eaton and Jorge Andrade Use and conservation are two concepts that always create controversy in the field of nature, biodiversity and management of natural resources. It is often conceived that the appropriation of a natural resource is opposed to its conservation, however, this is not necessarily true. The traditional approach to conservation has […]
Rescue and Release of a Snowy Plover in Ensenada
By Jonathan Vargas This article was translated by Oscar Gómez On Friday, August 2nd of 2019, during the monitoring of snowy plover and least tern at the Punta Banda sandbar, our friend Álvaro San Jose, as well as Aurelio Álvarez, and Jorge Sánchez of the San Diego Zoo, found a male snowy plover in serious […]
Salt-Marsh Bird’s Beak
Text by Margie Mulligan Photos by Jon Rebman and Margie Mulligan Amongst the salt marsh plants not far from the water’s edge grows an unassuming plant that doesn’t exclusively use chlorophyll to make food. In addition to photosynthesis, this special plant employs a unique strategy of parasitizing its companion plants by extending a slender projection […]
A Look at Terrestrial Mammals in Baja California
By Héctor Sánchez, Yael Schoeppe, Leticia Marisol Talavera and Iamania Vergara Mammals are vertebrate animals that, due to their adaptations, have been able to establish in the most diverse ecosystems in the world (Sánchez-Cordero et al., 2014). In addition to this, mammals are a fundamental link in the food chain, both human and animal, and […]
Isla Rasa, 40 Years Learning from the Nesting Seabirds
By Enriqueta Velarde / Seabird Ecology of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries, University of Veracruz Isla Rasa is a nesting area of approximately 260,000 Heermann’s gulls (Larus heermanni) and 300,000 elegant terns (Thalasseus elegans) that converge in this small point of our geography at the beginning of spring, both species come, respectively, from […]
Understanding and Protecting the Rare Beach Spectaclepod
By Heather Schneider and Matt Guilliams Situated high atop coastal dunes on the southern end of the Punta Mazo Nature Reserve grows a diminutive plant with a curious common name: the beach spectaclepod. Known to botanists as Dithyrea maritima, this member of the mustard family (Brassicaceae) gets its colloquial name from the unusual shape of […]
Reptiles and Climate Change
By Patricia Galina, Rafael A. Lara, Jorge H. Valdez and Fausto R. Méndez Climate change effects are reflected in the increase of air and ocean temperatures, changes in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, and other extreme climate events are phenomena documented for the effects inflicted on living organisms (IPCC, 2013). Ectotherms (for example, insects […]