NEWSFLASH

SAVING THE PENINSULAR BIGHORN SHEEP

Peninsular bighorn sheep can get water from cacti, splitting the spiny barrel cactus with their horns and eating its watery insides. But thanks to sprawl and agribusiness, both sheep and succulent are increasingly rare: Up to 2 million bighorns roamed North America at the turn of the 20th century, but now only 70,000 remain. Peninsular bighorns, a so-called “distinct population segment” of these, number only in the hundreds. Still, their population has grown since they were protected under the Endangered Species Act, and thanks to a Center lawsuit, they currently lay claim to nearly 850,000 acres of critical habitat. In 2007, we scored a big victory for part of that habitat when we won an injunction preventing development-associated grading in California’s Chino Canyon.

Unfortunately, the Peninsular bighorn’s critical habitat is in jeopardy. Responding to development pressure and a 2005 tribal lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to dramatically reduce the area of land set aside for bighorn recovery, and its 2008 critical habitat proposal would halve the original area.

But the Center’s record proves we won’t let the Peninsular bighorn perish. In 2000, we won protections for the bighorn and more than 50 other endangered species in Southern California’s four national forests, and in 2001, we helped end off-road vehicle use of Dunn Road, illegally built in bighorn habitat. We also advocate for protection of Peninsular bighorn in the central and southern parts of their range, including challenging off-road vehicle use in the Desert Cahuilla/Truckhaven area and fighting the expansion of a large gypsum mine, both in critical sheep habitat. We’re working to curb impacts from off-road vehicles in the Yuha Desert and other border areas that provide a link to bighorn populations in Mexico.