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Tucson Audubon Society
Proyecto Corredor Colibrí
(Hummingbird Corridor Project)
Proyecto Corredor Colibrí1 (PCC)
is a bi-national, collaborative project that works directly with
communities located in the Mexican portion of the upper San Pedro
watershed in natural and cultural resource conservation. Our goals
include: (1) capacity-building of local residents, (2) conservation of
biodiversity, and (3) the development of ecologically, economically, and
socially sustainable projects that stand 
as
examples to communities throughout the watershed. We accomplish our goals
through environmental education and community outreach, research and
monitoring, habitat restoration, and economic diversification, seeking
win-win situations for both communities and conservation.
In June 2002, Tucson Audubon Society (TAS) became the fiscal sponsor of Proyecto Corredor Colibrí, allowing our two organizations to work together toward our common goals of cross-border conservation and education. With this article, we want to introduce ourselves to those TAS members who are still unfamiliar with our work, to highlight Villa Verde, one of the main spots where we’ve been working, and to invite interested TAS members to join us on an upcoming birding tour of the area.
Villa
Verde is a main tributary to the San Pedro River, located approximately 25
kilometers southeast of the Bureau of Land Management administered San
Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area and the U.S. border, in Sonora,
Mexico. Villa Verde is located between two ejidos2 (Ejido
Ignacio Zaragoza and Ejido Cuauhtemoc), where ranching is the main source
of income. Villa Verde’s large reservoir and 10 km stretch of riparian
habitat support three of the most endangered habitats in the San Pedro
riparian ecosystem: cottonwood-willow gallery forest, ciénega (grassy
wetland), and sacaton grassland. When these three are combined with the
diversity of other habitats at Villa Verde, the area supports a great
variety of bird species. So far we have documented nearly 171 species at
Villa Verde, including Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Gray Hawk, and Bald Eagle.
PCC’s involvement with these communities is diverse. Some of our current projects include:
Environmental education in local schools, including field trips, classroom programs, and schoolyard habitat gardens;
Community-wide conservation projects, including reforestation and the development of a native plant nursery and water catchment system;
Economic diversification, including ecotourism and an Ocotillo Fence Cooperative;
Riparian restoration; and
Bird, mammal, and vegetation research and monitoring.
Look for an announcement of natural history tours to Villa Verde in an upcoming issue of the Vermilion Flycatcher, and please feel free to contact us if you’d like to learn more about our project, would like to volunteer, or just want to introduce yourselves. We’re very excited to have this opportunity to join forces with TAS and look forward to great collaborations in the future!
Jennie Duberstein and Juan
Caicedo
Project Co-directors
Proyecto Corredor Colibrí
P.O. Box 1071
Bisbee, AZ 85603
520-432-9116
info@p-cc.org
1 Proyecto Corredor Colibrí is pronounced ‘pro YECK toe koray DORE koe lee BREE’ and means Hummingbird Corridor Project. PCC began as an idea for a series of pollinator gardens and birding destinations throughout the Mexican portion of the watershed. Since then, our mission has expanded substantially, but we kept our original name.
2 An ejido (pronounced ‘eh HEE doe’) is a rural, cooperatively-run community.
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This page was updated on 12/28/05