Overland Society

November 2009 - Rancho el Aribabi, Sonora, MX

Six intrepid members and friends of Overland Society packed up our building tools and GPSs and headed down to Sonora, Mexico, to help build a casita for eco-tourism and hunting. Rancho el Aribabi is a privately owned 10,000-acre ranch in northern Sonora,only 2 hours from the U.S. border, and is an important linkage connecting the vast wilderness of the Sierra Madre Occidental to the southern wildlands of the United States. The area is home to jaguars, ocelots, cougars, and bobcats - “cuatro gatos” - in all, over 30 threatened and endangered species. Supporting owner Carlos Robles and his family through eco-tourism is key to encouraging other ranchers to protect the cats on their lands, and implement similar conservation efforts; they have established a bed-and-breakfast that can be used by hunters (it’s trophy white-tail country), birders, and overlanders.

Our group’s expertise in welding really helped the project get a “leg up.” Several of us also mapped the roads (some 4WD, some not) and ID’d some good spots for birdwatching, driving and motorcycle tours, and hiking. Several organizations and businesses are starting to run trips down to Aribabi, both at the bed-and-breakfast and at the more remote camp that we are helping to build (see ConserVentures.org, and SkyIslandAlliance.org; Roseann Hanson, Overland Society secretary, is the owner of ConserVentures). See our Picasa web album here: http://picasaweb.google.com/TheOverlandSociety/

June 2009 - Fort Huachuca Mountain Lion Track Count

On June 5 and 6, 2009, Roseann and Jonathan Hanson were volunteer team leaders for the 20th Fort Huachuca Mountain Lion Track Count in southeastern Arizona. They have been involved with this project for 14 years off and on. It is one of the longest-running wildlife tracking programs in the country, and this was the final count, according to founder Sheridan Stone, the fort biologist.

Sky Island Alliance, a non-profit conservation organization in Tucson that works on wildlife linkages throughout the American Southwest and northern Mexico, coordinated the event. Roseann and Jonathan have taught wildlife tracking skills for the organization since 2000.

Two of the transects are only accessible by a difficult 4WD trail, so Sky Island Alliance asked the Hansons to provide ‘ferry service’ to the other volunteers on that section of the mountain. The team piled into Roseann’s Land Cruiser diesel and headed up the mountain at 6 am. Six teams in all spent the weekend surveying sections of trail for mountain lion and black bear tracks and sign; eight black bear track sets and eleven lion track sets were recorded. The data has helped the Fort get an understanding of wildlife numbers and movements over time. The event has also been a very important way for people of all walks of life and philosophies to come together over a common interest - wildlife; over the years new friendships have been forged between hunters, vegetarians, environmentalists, Democrats and Republicans - the wildlife doesn’t care what our politics are.

October 2006 - Film: The Running Wind, by Cincinnati Zoo and Ancient Voices Productions

This project started the Overland Society. One of the founders, Roseann Hanson, was contacted in 2006 by friends from the Cincinnati Zoo who were making an educational film about an ancient North American story - that of ancestral cheetahs and pronghorn evolution, as told through the voice of the Early People. They had the cheetahs to film, but needed shots of running pronghorn - where could they not only find pronghorn quickly, but get out on a budget and film them in just 2 days?

A few phone calls to friends Scott Brady, Chris Marzonie, Wil Kuhns, and Brian DeArmon and we had a plan: we would all converge in Prescott with our 4WD vehicles; 2 of us would scout and use our 2M radios to report locations of pronghorn off scenic roads with grasslands . . . the rest of us would be support drivers for videographer Pat Story, and producers Cathryn Hilker and Kathleen Maynard.

Everything came off without a hitch - the team arrived from Phoenix, we whisked them off to begin scouting in the late afternoon, then headed off to dinner at the Palace. Next morning at dawn found us out ‘chasing’ the sun for Pat’s planned sunrise shot . . . it was well below freezing, and Roseann and Chris made a special Starbucks run to keep Cathryn from freezing.

The rest of the day we got some fantastic shots of running and posing pronghorn, much to everyone’s satisfaction. We had only one ’scare’ when Scott excitedly reported on the 2M that “we have a large herd in place for a perfect shot!” Which had Roseann wondering if Arizona Game and Fish would come looking for us for illegal will-call hunting!

The film was made and is a wonderful short, educational look at the story of The Running Wind.

May 2008 - Jaguar Conservation

In spring 2008, the tables were turned, and Roseann invited Cathryn Hilker and Kathleen Maynard of the Cincinnati Zoo Angel Fund to join her and Jonathan Hanson, Scott Brady, Brian DeArmon, and Marisa Rice on a journey in southern Arizona to learn about Arizona’s jaguars and find out what is being done about their critical conservation.

For a weekend, we explored the “Jaguar Trail” and worked on a story that became a feature in Overland Journal, the magazine founded by Scott and Jonathan.

The story resulted in significant fundraising support for the Northern Jaguar Project and the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project.

July 2008 - South Rift Safari

In July 2008, Jonathan Hanson, now president of Overland Society, volunteered his considerable skills as a driver, logistical expert, mechanic, and all-around-safari-guide to assist the South Rift Association of Land Owners with their budding new safari circuit. The new South Rift Circuit will link the Masai Mara National Reserve with Amboseli National Park, in southern Kenya. The team that Jonathan helped lead was proving the concept as viable - they rented three Land Cruisers, and set off into the unknown with their Maasai partners. Roseann is a consultant for the African Conservation Fund and helped put the trip together - but Jonathan embodied the spirit of the Overland Society by volunteering entirely for the work. He has written up the story for a feature in the upcoming Spring Overland Journal, of which he is a founder and its executive editor.