Malpai Borderlands Group: Ecosystem Management in Action‪.‬

Background The Malpai Borderlands Group, a small non-profit organization with leaders from local communities, is attempting to implement ecosystem management on nearly one million acres of virtually unfragmented open-space landscape in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico (Figure 1). This area of over 400,000 hectares is comparable in size to Grand Canyon National Park. It is roughly pyramid-shaped, with the base of the pyramid running just east of Douglas, Arizona into New Mexico to the far eastern boundary of the 500-square-mile (130 hectare) Gray Ranch. The apex is just south of Rodeo, New Mexico, near the Arizona-New Mexico state line, and runs to the Mexican border.