Research and Conservation

Yajaira F. Gray

Yajaira F. Gray received her Masters of Science degree in Tropical Ecology from the Universidad de Los Andes Mérida, Venezuela in 1995. Her thesis was on the Application of Gap Models in American Tropical Forest: a case study in the Venezuelan Guyana Region. From 1996 to 1999, she worked as Assistant Seed Curator and Database Manager of the Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit organization based in Tucson, that works to conserve the traditional crops, seeds, and farming methods that have sustained native peoples throughout the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico. She also worked as a conservation biologist consultant for The Sonoran Institute, a non-profit organization that works with communities to conserve and restore important natural landscapes, wildlife, and cultural values in western North America. The specific project was a community-based revegetation-riparian conservation effort in the Santa Cruz River, Sonora Mexico. She is especially interested in conservation biology, binational environmental education programs, and community-based science.

In 1998 she initially worked with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum as a contractor in different education and outreach projects such as: Sense of Place Project (conducting workshops and as translator), La Fiesta del Desierto, 1999, 2001 (coordinator), The Desert Walk (coordinator), and in the Ironwood Proposed Monument Report (manuscript editor).

Currently, at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum , Yajaira Gray has been working as Education Outreach Coordinator developing bilingual environmental education materials for teachers, students, and the general public. She has extensive experience in organizing and conducting teacher and student-oriented education workshops including the ASDM's Migratory Pollinators workshops for teachers and community members conducted throughout the Arizona-Sonora border region. This effort included establishing a parallel community-based science effort (Partners in Pollination) to assist the Migratory Pollinator research team in supplemental science observations. In collaboration with Bat Conservation International, she developed a bilingual curriculum, "Bats in the Sonoran Desert," and has been organizing and conducting teacher-training workshops in the borderland region. She has been collaborating with the Udall Center in ECOSTART I and II an environmental education program in the San Pedro watershed. Her more recent duties include developing and conducting "Desert Gardens" training workshops in the Tucson area and south the border; coordinator of the Pollinator Gardens Project in San Lazaro, Santa Cruz River, Sonora and Tumacacori National Park and coauthoring an ASDM publication, "Pollinators of the Sonoran Desert," a bilingual guide targeting teachers and laypersons. And she is also currently the Gulf of California Conference, 2004 coordinator.