Our Mission


It is the Malpai Borderlands Group's goal to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse, flourishing community of human, plant and animal life in our borderlands region.

Together, we will accomplish this by working to encourage profitable ranching and other traditional livelihoods, which will sustain the open space nature of our land for generations to come.

Program Areas


We formed a nonprofit organization to bring ranchers, scientists, and key agencies together, and today the Malpai Borderlands Group now carries out a series of conservation programs activities, including land restoration; endangered species habitat protection; cost-sharing range and ranch improvements; and land conservation projects.

Learn more about these projects by clicking any of the subject buttons above!

Welcome to the new Malpai Borderland Group website! Below are some new features and publications for you to check out!


Announcements!

MBG Fire History GIS MAP & Dashboard

Want to learn more about the history of fire in the Malpai Borderlands Group area? Check out our interactive GIS dashboard that includes timelines, statistics and maps!

MBG 30th Anniversary Newsletter

Click the button below to read and download the MBG 30th Anniversary Newsletter: “An Unexpected Journey Through the Radical Center” by Peter Warren and Tana Kappel.

Newsletter Archive


Want to keep up with the Malpai Borderlands Group? Access, read and download all of our published newsletters dating back to our very first publication from 1994 with the button below.

Want to continue your support of the Malpai Borderlands Group in the future? Learn more about the different methods of planned giving through the link below. As always, your help is greatly appreciated.

Planned giving


How to get involved


There are plenty of ways to get involved with the Malpai Borderlands Group, and any and all support is always greatly appreciated!

Who We Are


We are a grassroots, landowner-driven nonprofit organization attempting to implement ecosystem management on nearly one million acres of virtually unfragmented open-space landscape in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

The Malpai Borderlands area includes the San Bernardino Valley, the Peloncillo Mountains, the Animas Valley and the Animas Mountains. It is roughly pyramid shaped, with the base of the pyramid beginning just east of Douglas, Arizona along the Mexican Border to just west of Antelope Wells, New Mexico. The apex is just south of Animas, New Mexico.

With elevations ranging from 3500 to 8500 feet, the Malpai is a diverse area of mountains, canyons, valleys and riparian corridors. Several rare, threatened, and endangered plant and animal species are found here. It is the only place in the U.S. where Gould's turkey and white-sided jackrabbits occur naturally. It is also home to popular big-game species such as Coues deer, mule deer, pronghorn and Desert Bighorn sheep.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this huge landscape is that fewer than 100 human families reside on it. Many of the families who live here have been here for generations. Except for two small wildlife preserves, this is cattle ranching country. As ranchers, we have been concerned about a key resource we depend on for our livelihoods and way of life - the diminishing quality of grasslands for grazing. Fragmentation of the landscape, beginning with the subdivision of some ranches in our area, has also been a looming threat.

We formed a nonprofit organization to bring ranchers, scientists, and key agencies together, and today the Malpai Borderlands Group now carries out a series of conservation programs activities, including land restoration; endangered species habitat protection; cost-sharing range and ranch improvements; and land conservation projects.