Wildlife Without Borders: Conserving Mammals Across the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico
Thursday, November 06, 2025 | 07:00 pm
Castetter Hall 100, 219 Yale Blvd NE | Zoom
About:
This roundtable explores key case studies of mammals with transboundary distributions across the U.S.–Mexico border that have been affected by poaching, habitat encroachment, border infrastructure, and other anthropogenic pressures. Drawing from the biogeographic history of the Southwestern U.S.–Northwestern Mexico region, presenters will highlight the unique diversity of sky island species and examine the ecological and evolutionary processes underlying their elevated richness, endangerment, and host–parasite dynamics. Discussion will also address the prospects for species persistence under changing environmental conditions along this politically and ecologically complex frontier, helping to identify challenges and pathways toward effective binational conservation strategies.
Dr. Jesús A. Fernández is a professor of Taxonomy and Systematics of Biodiversity at the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua (UACH). His research interests are related to the evolution and conservation of wild mammals in the Northwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico region. He is a member of the National Researchers System (SNI) in Mexico, and currently holds the 2025 UNM COMEXUS Fulbright Mexico Studies Chair at UNM.
Dr. Cuauhcihuatl Vital García is a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ). She is a wildlife disease ecologist working in the Chihuahuan Desert Her research explores how rodents, coyotes, and deer connect through the parasites they share, and how desert ecology, climate, and human presence shape disease dynamics.
Dr. Jason Malaney is the current curator of Biosciences at the NM Museum of Natural History and Sciences at UNM. His research unites morphological and molecular data (DNA) from museum specimens to uncover patterns of geographic variation and unravel the evolutionary history and responses to Pleistocene climate fluctuations.
Dr. Enrique Martínez Meyer is a professor at the Institute of Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His research focuses on the field of Geographical Ecology, exploring the causal factors that shape biodiversity and its responses to environmental change, with the aim of developing solutions to current pressing environmental crises
Dr. Samuel Truett is a professor and Director of the Center for the Southwest at UNM. He is interested in the crossings—social, cultural, and environmental—that have connected the North American West and Mexico to the Americas and the world at large. Known for his work in borderlands history, he also works actively in environmental history, the history of the North American West, transnational history, Native American and Indigenous History, Mexican history, and empires and borderlands in world history.
Notes:
This event is free and open to the public.
