DesertBlog

Bighorn Sheep Need a Home, Too

In contrast to its good news for the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the US Fish & Wildlife Service has proposed a revision to southern California bighorn critical habitat that is mostly bad news. While the Service responded to public comment by adding back  36,000 acres of critical habitat that it initially proposed to take away, let’s put this in context: This new proposal still takes away more than half of the Peninsular bighorn’s critical habitat, reducing it from 845,000 acres to just 420,000 acres, with more to be taken away should economic considerations warrant.

The public has until October 27 to submit comments, and you’ll find more info on how to do that here in the days ahead. But even more important is a PUBLIC HEARING on the revised habitat that is coming up fast:

• Date: Wednesday, September 10
• Times: 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
• Place: The Living Desert, 47-900 Portola Ave., Palm Desert, California

Mark your calendars, and we’ll hope to see you there.

Just the Worst Details
One of the worst features of the plan is its proposal to break up the bighorn’s habitat into three separate areas, defying the well proven importance of habitat connectivity. The habitat plan even excludes land that is now owned by Anza-Borrego Desert State Park that connects the Vallecito Mountains to the Tierra Blanca and Sawtooth ranges.

Another questionable contention of the revised habitat plan is that critical habitat should only be designated where bighorn have been sighted since the late 1980s. Under this requirement, no wolves would have been re-introduced to the northern Rockies, and the entire California condor recovery effort would have been impossible. The sightings requirement leaves out huge swaths of land that still provide valuable habitat and that could one day support a naturally recolonized or re-introduced bighorn population. As Dr. Jon Wehausen and others have shown, bighorn sheep re-colonize abandoned ranges all the time.

Lisa Belenky of the Center for Biological Diversity called the proposal “a blueprint for extinction, not recovery.” Joan Taylor of the Coachella Valley Sierra Club said, “The administration has caved to special development interests, and the bighorn have gotten the shaft in the process.” And one highly placed official with the original Peninsular bighorn recovery effort called the Service’s action “despicable.”

(Photo by Larry Hogue)