"She and her team of volunteers brave extreme heat to search for people left behind on the perilous journey from Mexico to the U.S."

"Adriana Carillo hikes through Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains with a black scarf around her neck, and she carries a walking stick. It’s March 2021, and it’s snowing. The sun hasn’t yet risen, but Carillo is surrounded by grasses and shrubs coated in a delicate layer of white fluff. The borderlands mountain range is part of the extraordinary Sky Islands. At nearly 4,500-foot elevation, the cool and isolated mountains harbor diverse species unlike those found in the hot desert ecosystem below. A month earlier, authorities had captured on camera an ocelot roaming the region.

But the 63-year-old isn’t there at 4 a.m. to investigate endangered wildlife. She’s braving the steep terrain alongside 11 others to look for Ariagne, a 23-year-old mother and migrant whose group abandoned her 15 days earlier on their way to the U.S. after she could no longer walk. The group travels some 10 miles but doesn’t find her. It’ll take the crew, which includes two of Ariagne’s relatives, another six attempts over nine months to complete their mission.

By the time they do, all that’s left of her are her clothes, shoes, hair, and bones."

Yessenia Funes reports for Yale Climate Connections September 7, 2023. [2]