Please join us in welcoming Sergio Avila to the Outdoors team!
Sergio is based in Tucson, Arizona and is our first regional Local Outdoors Coordinator. He will work with staff and volunteers to design and implement local strategies and projects that increase opportunities for people to connect with nature to improve their mental and physical health, and ignite their commitment for protecting the planet and each other.
Born in Mexico City, Sergio Avila-Villegas grew up exploring in the Chihuahuan Desert of north-central Mexico, while dreaming of becoming a big-cat scientist. Sergio is a wildlife biologist graduated from the University of Baja California with a Master’s degree in Arid Lands Management (2000), and University of Aguascalientes with a B.S. in Biology (1997). Sergio has lived and worked in Arizona since 2004 and became a U.S. Citizen in 2016.
For twenty years, Sergio has worked on local and regional conservation efforts along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, as a conservation scientist, wildlife researcher and facilitator of bi-national conservation projects. He has led collaborative efforts on connectivity for wildlife, habitat restoration, public education and interpretation in the U.S. southwest and northwest Mexico. Sergio has traveled extensively across all Mexican states and western United States.
Sergio Avila’s varied experience includes living with the indigenous Tarahumara of the Sierra Madre, which transformed his vision of environmental stewardship and conservation. For over ten years, Avila tracked and studied borderland jaguars in Sonora and Arizona. Two live encounters with jaguars in the mountains of Sonora have been life-changing experiences that shaped Sergio’s personal and professional life. In the last two years, he has led efforts to protect monarch butterflies promoting pollinator gardens in Arizona, connecting efforts with a new monarch-monitoring network in northwest Mexico, which he helped form.
Sergio enjoys trail running, gardening, bird and butterfly watching, and looking for wildlife tracks and sign. He lives in Tucson with his wife Jenny, their three cats Lupe, Carlos, and Pancho, and Toby, the desert tortoise. Sergio is also the Chair of the Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity Committee of the Society for Conservation Biology, North American Chapter (2017), Conservation Science Fellow with the Wilburforce Foundation (2015), member of the Sonoran Joint Venture Management Board (2013), and a certified wildlife tracker with CyberTracker (2013).