For a few weeks in April and May, the elegant trogon (Trogon elegans) breeds in the rugged Atascosa Highlands that straddle the Arizona-Mexico border, flashes of its brilliant crimson belly occasionally visible among the sycamore trees. The birds are migrants, and have long pushed north from a historic range that extends through Mexico as far south as Costa Rica to breed in the highlands. Increasingly, driven by climate change, habitat loss and wildfire, the trogons are spending longer periods of time in this cooler land.
Trogons are one of the many rare birds found in the four small mountain ranges that make up the highlands at the junction of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts. Some of the peaks rise 6,000 feet above the surrounding desert, creating their own ecosystems, each so distinct and biologically diverse that they are known as “sky islands.”
Each so distinct and biologically diverse that they are known as “sky islands.”
This part of the Borderlands has been widely examined through the lens of politics and human migration but scarcely considered on its own terms. Yet it is an ecological utopia, a place of rich biodiversity and myriad communities of wrens, warblers and trogons, oak groves and acacia, javelina and mountain lions, prickly pear and piñon.
The images presented here are part of an ongoing project by ecologist Jack Dash and photographer Luke Swenson, who are creating the first – and so far, only – comprehensive botanical survey of the Atascosa Highlands. As Dash and Swenson started to document the highlands’ natural environment, they realized they couldn’t address the landscape without acknowledging the impact humans have had on it – and continue to have, through large-scale projects and the impacts of climate change. They discovered that there is no dividing line between history and natural history. With the Atascosa Highlands hosting roughly half of Arizona’s bird species and one-quarter of its flora, including several species that are not known to exist anywhere else in the United States, the project has become both an elegy and a baseline, a chronicle of the region at this particular moment in time, and a way to acknowledge what is there before it is gone. —Paige Blankenbuehler
This part of the Borderlands has been widely examined through the lens of politics and human migration, but scarcely considered on its own terms.
Atascosa Borderlands, a visual storytelling project about a remote stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, was created by ecologist Jack Dash and documentary photographer Luke Swenson. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
This coverage was supported by contributors to the High Country News Research Fund.
Note: A version of this story appeared in our print edition with errant information about the project’s connection to the University of Arizona; they are not affiliated. This story has been corrected. We also clarified the impact that climate change is having on elegant trogons (Trogon elegans) and updated captions that misidentified Stachys coccinea (scarlet betony) and Mentzelia montana (blazing star).
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Mountain Islands in the Desert Sea.
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