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flanks bend the river south toward the distant Sierra Azul. Here, researchers recently captured a wild ocelot on film, collected from a camera that my oldest daughter Jessica helped set up. Trotting along a rocky drainage only twenty-five miles from Arizona’s border with Mexico, the endangered spotted cat was a pleasant surprise. The last ocelot was documented in the region in 1964. Jessica says the animals, like their jaguar cousins, may be crossing from Mexico into Arizona, perhaps even using the Rio Cocóspera as a pathway north.

My daughter, in addition to her studies at the University of Arizona, is working with the Sky Island Alliance, assisting international efforts to record the movements of our border-crossing jaguars. The nonprofit conservation organization teams with scientists, volunteers, and landowners to protect and restore the region’s diverse native species and habitat. Jessica has been traveling into remote country in Arizona and Mexico with Sky Island staff to set up motion-sensor cameras, hiking and camping with men and women who spend most of their days away from modern conveniences like showers and toilets. It was Sky Island Alliance that brought Jessica and me to this beautiful and wild borderland country of desert rivers.

Like the nearby seventeenth-century Kino mission by the same name, the Cocóspera has lost much of its former glory. At first glance the river seems to be only a shallow irrigation ditch in the service of livestock and agriculture. But soon we see more than cows and alfalfa fields. A cottonwood grove stretches down the far bank, leaving the near side open to sky. A gray hawk screams among the branches. In its dark robe of feathers, a great blue heron slowly toes the algae-matted river margin, the bird’s huge feet leaving Triassic prints in the mud.

Unmistakable signs show the river’s heavy use. Cattle have trampled its banks. Canals divert its water. But, unlike many rivers in the Southwest—the Gila, San Pedro, and Santa Cruz rivers, for example—water still flows year-round in the Rio Cocóspera. Erosion hasn’t downcut the river and trapped it into a steep-walled channel reinforced with gunnite. Native fish, like the longfin dace, continue to send ripples across its glassy surface. Rivers will probably always be in the service of people. The question, for Mexicans and Americans alike, is will that service be sustainable?

One Mexican rancher is already answering that question. Carlos Robles owns Rancho El Aribabi, a ten-thousand-acre spread that reaches from the Rio Cocóspera into the Sierra Azul mountains. His ranch house rests on a saguaro-stabbed hillside above the river, which today is a fencerow of cottonwoods and willows that screens the corrugated eastern horizon. Ten years ago there were no trees, and the river was a stinking, muddy ditch of eroded banks and a dead wickerwork of Bermuda grass. Then Carlos removed his cows.

Jessica and I arrive at El Aribabi to join a group of Sky Island Alliance (SIA) researchers and volunteers who are conducting a wildlife inventory of the ranch. Our invitation had come from Sergio Avila, an SIA biologist who was born in Mexico City and grew up in Zacatecas at the southern end of the Chihuahuan Desert. With a master’s degree from the Universidad de Baja California, Sergio has worked with wildlife ranging from mountain lions to sea lions.

We spend our first day hiking rugged canyons, searching for mammal tracks and changing the film in several motion-sensitive cameras. Sergio leads the way, while Cynthia Wolf, a freelance biologist, wilderness outfitter, and tracker extraordinaire, scans the sandy soil and mud for animal sign. Jessica keeps notes for each camera and monitors our GPS coordinates.

In the evening, we rejoin Carlos at his ranch house and descend upon his kitchen. While Sergio reheats some carne asada he finds in the refrigerator, David and Greg, two volunteers from Nogales, Arizona, prepare what they call “rajas de chile verde en crema,” sautéing onions with roasted chilies, adding cheese and a can of Media Crema. We eat the