Patricio's father was a doctor. Don Carlos Osuna was one of his patients, he had a large ranch in the mountains of northwest Coahuila, in the 1950s it was one of the least uninhabitable regions of Mexico, with abundance of wildlife. Don Carlos annually invited the Robles Gil family. It was a paradise for a small child from a big city, Patricio was four years old when he visited Las Pilas, for the first time, the annual trips to this wonderful place marked him and pushed him to commit to the conservation of nature.

 

The youngest son of Don Carlos, Guillermo was the administrator of the family property, a man with a deep commitment to the land and a great naturalist. In 1984, concerned about the logging exploitation in a nearby mountain range, Madera del Carmen, he asked Patricio's brother, Javier, to inspect how much the pine-oak forest had suffered. Patricio and Gerardo, the younger brother, join the expedition. The three brothers walk with their backpacks for more than a week among the peaks of the Sierra. Loggers had cut down the older pines, but the forest was still alive, with many younger trees growing everywhere. Guillermo's plans were to buy it, and ensure its conservation, he personally put up an endowment of 25 thousand US dollars as collateral, when he couldn’t find donors, he lost his money.

 

Almost ten years later, in 1993, with the Sierra Madre organization already active. A close friend of Patricio, Raúl Pérez Madero, called him and said: Lorenzo Zambrano, general director of Cemex, the largest cement company in Mexico, wants to talk to you. At the meeting Lorenzo told Patricio, my business partners are telling me that Cemex needs to commit to environmental causes, and I would like to conserve wild lands and protect them in perpetuity, and I want you to present me options, to buy them, at the same time I want you to produce a series of environmental art books to show the world Cemex commitment to nature.

 

The first 15 books that Patricio produces for Cemex are considered among conservationists an environmental publishing legend. Patricio knew, from the moment he left Lorenzo's office, that Madera's del Carmen was the place to promote. A remote and diverse complex of ecosystems, a place that could be rewild with exceptional results, and that this Mexican mountain was the twin sister of the Chisos Mountain, just across the border in Texas, Big Bend National Park. This Cemex commitment will be a dream come true for the United States Park Service, Mexico will finally protect the other side, that is more beautiful, more diverse, and much bigger mountain range. On another expedition he traveled the Rio Grande on a raft with his older brother. At that time Javier was the director of the first conservation agency of the Mexican government, to set foot in the region. The superintendent of Big Bend National Park, upon knowing of our presence, invited us to have dinner at his house, he recounted the 1944 initiative of President Delano Roosevelt, when he asked the president of Mexico, Manuel Ávila Camacho, to secure the region. with a binational Peace Park. It did not happen.

 

It took Patricio seven years to convince Cemex, lower-level employees, of the opportunity, importance of El Carmen. In that time, the Ministry of Natural Resources of Mexico, SEMARNAT, declared Madera’s del Carmen as a Flora and Fauna Reserve, and the global organization Conservation International completed the study to include Madera’s del Carmen-Chisos Mountains as one of the 35 HOTSPOTS World Ecoregions, areas of great importance for Biodiversity.  When Cemex Finally bought the first 70 thousand hectares, the most important property, the highest mountain pine forest, was already secure by another party.

 

Patricio remained a few more years advising Cemex, on many issues, he worked to bring some extinct megafauna to the mountain and deserts of the region, like the pronghorn antelope and the desert bighorn sheep. He did create a special advisory board for the El Carmen Initiative, to ensure its good management. He promoted the story in more than 20 international environmental magazines, including National Geographic (ARTICLE EL CARMEN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FEBREO 2002). He worked to create the first Wilderness designation in Latin America at El Carmen, initiative that was presented at the 8th World Wilderness Congress in Anchorage, Alaska, in 2004, where the announcement earned a standing ovation from attendees.

 

Today the Inactive El Carmen is part of 2 million hectares, Mega Corridor of protected lands. between Mexico and the United States. Cemex owns 140 thousand hectares and is working to recover species such as the desert bighorn sheep, pronghorn, elk, and bison. These actions are one of the greatest Rewilding success stories in the world. When Douglas Thompkins, the controversial philanthropist, that bought so much land in Chile that he divided the country in half and then donated it as protected land to the people of Chile, new about it, at the 8th World Wildlife Congress, not knowing Patricio. he sent him this note.