Peninsular Pronghorn
El Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve, Baja California Sur to be exact. We have partnered with the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, The Living Desert, Palm Beach Zoo, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Mexico’s CONANP and ENDESU to return the endangered Peninsular Pronghorn antelope back to Baja. The goal of the trip is the translocation of a managed herd and release of 200 individuals back to their desert habitat, effectively tripling the number of wild Peninsular Pronghorn.
Corralling of the males
The days are fairly routine, crawl out of our tents at 5:30am, a one hour drive to “Estacion Berrendo” arriving at 7:00am. Prepare for hand capture of animals moved into Boma style enclosures. Each individual will receive a physical exam by one of the 6 veterinarians involved in the project. Then a hoof trim if needed, identification chip, mild sedative for the drive back to the release site and then placed in a trailer. The morning routine goes on for a few hours: move animals into capture corral, a team of 12 hand capture 4 individual pronghorn (dodge slashing hooves on all and sharp horns on males), bring out to veterinarians for exams, place in trailer, repeat 10 times.
a quick trip to the veterinarians...
This is followed by the one hour drive back to temporary pens at the release site where they will be held for a short period of time. The humans then attempt to find some shade from the desert sun and 98f heat for a few hours until 4pm when it is almost time to go back and start the procedure all over again, running until we return with another trailer full of pronghorn by 8pm that evening. Time for dinner and the 25-30 members of our group then try and catch and quick shower (there are two at the station) before climbing back into our tents for the evening.
Released pronghorn move off into the Reserve
6 days and nights and 250+ animals later, it is time for a few “soft” releases into the translocation site. A fence is opened so that a group of females and this years fawns can walk out at their leisure and the next morning there are pronghorn prints scattered across the sandy trails of the area, animals easily visible on the sloping hills. A small group of males are then released which interestingly brings a few of the females and a number of fawns back to the pen area where they interact before moving back over the hillside in a slow line of animals, slowly disappearing over the top.
Due to poor vegetation and lack of water in the summer months, our conservation partners in Mexico will place out supplemental food and water for these animals for the next 6-9 months until they all have a better idea of where to find sufficient resources until the winter rains bring grasses and water back to this 26,000hectare protected reserve. It may have only taken us 9 days to move 250 animals back into their natural habitat, but it has also taken us 10 years to get to this point. Hopefully, the next 10 years will see the pronghorn beginning to return to sustainable numbers where our help will no longer be necessary.
