A run along the abyss

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Arizona
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A run along the abyss
By Mitch Tobin
March 7, 2004

CABEZA PRIETA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE - The Sonoran pronghorn, the
world's second-fastest land animal, is running on empty.

Only about 25 of the endangered, antelopelike animals are left in the
United States, all of them in southwest Arizona. In Mexico, fewer than
400 pronghorn remain around the growing tourist town of Rocky Point.

With pronghorn at the brink, land managers are being forced to limit
grazing, public access and military training across a vast swath of
Sonoran Desert, where the drought has even killed the creosote.

Healthy pronghorn run effortlessly at 45 mph, thanks to an evolution in
North America beside cheetahs and other now-extinct predators. But
scientists say pronghorn's reliance on speed has also made them skittish
and lousy jumpers. That's turned fences and roads into formidable
obstacles in their increasingly busy habitat.

"The Sonoran pronghorn is one subspecies that's almost certainly doomed
to extinction," said Rick Brusca, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum's
executive program director.

The only hope, biologists and federal officials say, is to proceed with
a risky, unproven strategy of transplanting pronghorn from Mexico,
breeding them in an open-air enclosure, then setting them loose in a
wilderness enhanced with added water and forage.

The situation is so dire that pronghorn sightings have forced the
military to cancel or move one-third of its live-fire missions at the
Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, home to 40 percent of the
pronghorn's U.S. range and prime training grounds for the Davis-Monthan
and Luke Air Force bases.

An Ajo rancher whose family settled in the area 124 years ago has seen
his cattle booted.

And starting next Monday, dirt roads that access nearly 1 million acres
of public land will be closed until July 15 to give newborn pronghorn
and their mothers a better shot at survival. But the closures won't
affect the backcountry's biggest source of traffic - drug smugglers,
illegal border crossers and the Border Patrol agents who pursue them.

Many of the Sonoran pronghorn are expected to make it through the
summer. But beyond that, scientists say, the creature's prospects are
grim. Without an influx of new DNA, any population smaller than 50 will
suffer inbreeding, be susceptible to disease and die out.

"It's now or never," said Professor Paul Krausman, an expert on large
desert mammals at the University of Arizona. "If we weren't actively
managing that population, they'd probably go by the wayside"

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/12866.php

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