By Aaryn Olsson Sometimes you’ve got to do it the hard way in order to do it the easy way later. This winter we’re mapping buffelgrass on Tumamoc Hill the hard way by walking 50 miles back and forth across its volcanic slopes in a tight grid pattern. While many Tucsonans hike the zigzagging road…
Category: Conservation
2022 In Review
As we kick off 2023, we’d like to take some time to reflect on key highlights from the past year. The Desert Museum is working to sustain the incredible biodiversity of The Sonoran Desert by slowing the spread of invasive buffelgrass, discovering the hidden worlds of our native bee pollinators, exploring arid-adapted foods, saving rare…
Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery: A Binational Effort
As evidenced by its common name, the Mexican gray wolf is native to northern Mexico as well as to southern Arizona and New Mexico. Early this summer, U.S. and Mexican authorities signed an important agreement to continue their collaborations to conserve, manage, and recover this endangered animal. The Mexican gray wolf is a subspecies of…
Partner in Conservation: Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans
CEDO is located in Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point), Sonora, Mexico. The world celebrates its oceans every year on June 8, World Ocean Day. Meanwhile, here in Tucson, June marks the depth of our “arid foresummer,” the hottest and driest time of the year. We may dream of the beach, the sound of lapping waves, and…
It’s World Bee Day. Time for Bee Bingo!
Celebrate World Bee Day (May 20) with a fun game of Bee Bingo! Get outside and learn about the native bees and native plants of the Sonoran Desert and win prizes!
Desert Biota in a Changing Climate
Katie Predick, Conservation Research and Education Department Earth Day is a time to celebrate the fascinating, biodiverse, resilient nature all around us. And while it’s essential to appreciate and celebrate the unique nature of the Sonoran Desert and beyond, every Earth Day that passes without significant climate or environmental action brings us closer to the…
Desert Museum Science: Knowledge from Nature for People
A Day in the Life of Desert Museum Science Buzz Hoffman, a retired entomologist and founding member of the Museum’s Bee Team volunteers, spends several hours each week staring down a microscope, looking at minute details of native bees to sort them by genus. Isabella, a senior at Sunnyside High School, picks up where Buzz…
Save a Saguaro! Tucson Community Fights Buffelgrass
After University of Arizona Journalism student Hannah Cree attended the Save Our Saguaros Month Kickoff event to investigate the Tucson community’s efforts against the invasive species buffelgrass, we invited her to share the resulting story here on the Desert Diaries blog. Thank you to Hannah! By Hannah Cree with photos by Desert Museum staff It’s…
Why Pursue Conservation Work? A Personal Perspective
Ya-Ching Lin shares how climate disasters inspired her to pursue conservation work at the Desert Museum. Ya-Ching is the Museum’s GIS Analyst, working primarily on invasive species removal efforts. February 28th – March 4th is the National Invasive Species Awareness Week and the last week of Save Our Saguaros Month. Learn more about the campaign…
Weaving the Web of Life
Do you recall the grade school diagrams illustrating a simple food chain? This predator eats that prey and that prey eats plants, and plants obtain their energy from the sun and nutrients from soil. Arrows represent one organism eating another. Food chain diagrams help us visualize the flow of energy through an ecosystem. While the…
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