Revisiting Leopolds 'Perfect' Forest Health in Mexico's Rio Gavilan Watershed

摘要

The Rio Gavilan watershed, located in Mexico's northern Sierra Madre Occidental, is important in the history of forest conservation. During 1936-38 visits, Yale forestry graduate Aldo Leopold thought the area was in "perfect aboriginal health," a glimpse of what the US Southwest was like before intensive livestock grazing and predator removal. The visits influenced Leopold's concepts of land health and the land ethic, most famously professed in A Sand County Almanac. Leopold suggested the area as a norm in a continent-wide study of land health. The proposal was rejected by the USD A Forest Service and the watershed was altered soon after WWII, through extensive road building, grazing, and logging. Archival photographs, oral histories, and literaturereview were used to assess previous conditions. Field indices of forest, stream, and rangeland health, along with citizen surveys, were used to update present conditions. A pilot restoration project was also conducted.