Welcome back to the Porpo's Almanac, and I'm your host, Andy.

Today we're talking about the intersection of ecology and agriculture in the arid southwest climate of North America.

Today's episode brings us to the fragile river corridors of the American Southwest, places that seem like ribbons of life woven through a dry and demanding landscape.

But these vital waterways are under increasing pressure, and one of the most persistent and

controversial issues is livestock grazing. Joining us today is Ethan Bonnan, a researcher and

ecologist who has dedicated his career to studying the ecology of the Southwest, specifically

along the borderlands. What we focus on is the ecology of the southwest, specifically along the borderlands. What we focus on is the impacts

of agriculture on these unique ecosystems, whether that's stream bank erosion, the decline of native

vegetation and wildlife, or more, and we shed light on what happens when cattle and conservation collide in some of our most

water stressed ecosystems. Take a listen. Let us know what you think.

Ethan, thanks so much for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit about your background,

how you got involved with the work you're doing and I guess what that work is? Yeah, so I went to school for wildlife biology and conservation at Humboldt State

University and I moved out to southeastern Arizona after I graduated to study wildlife in the

borderlands. Particularly, we were looking at a few neotropical species that were

being impacted by the construction of the border wall. And we were just trying to gather

game camera data on some of the mammal activity in the borderlands, Sky Islands. And the

Sky Island bioregion is basically, for folks who don't know about it,

in southeastern Arizona, we have an archipelago of mountains that kind of connect the rocky

mountains to the north to the Sierra Madres in Mexico. And they are these little high elevation

mountains. Some of them can have aspen and fir forests and Canadian zone forests.

Some of them are almost 10,000 feet.

People don't really think of that when they think of southern Arizona,

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