Sheep Count: a Hobby for the Hardy : Volunteers Annually Brave Scorching Temperatures to Check Up on the Bighorn
This is not for wimps. Picking spring flowers in the desert is one thing. Sitting in the desert during one of the hottest weekends of the year is quite another--especially if you are there just to count sheep.
Or, in our case last year, not to count sheep.
Each year for a few days around Independence Day--this year it’s July 4-7--volunteers count sheep in the Anza-Borrego desert.
These aren’t the cute sheep that help you sleep. These are the rare, endangered bighorn sheep that are counted annually by desert park rangers to see whether the population is rising or falling.
But for all we saw from our post last year, you’d think the sheep already were extinct. Not one single, solitary bighorn condescended to enter our valley to drink from our water hole.
It’s hard to blame them. We were 2,500 feet up in the Anza-Borrego in temperatures up to 115 degrees, the rocks untouchably hot, the days unbearably long.
There we were, seven volunteers huddled under a 10-square-foot piece of blue plastic, worrying that rattlesnakes would assert themselves from under the surrounding rocks. Not only that but about once an hour we were hanging on for dear life trying to stop our shelter from ripping away as violent rock-roasted siroccos roared up the canyon like sea squalls without warning.
It’s times like these that The Reasons for Being Here are hard to recall. Then you remember that the Peninsular Bighorn, as the sheep are formally known, number only about 700 in the whole world. The biggest concentration is in Anza-Borrego State Park, where about 400 roam.
We’re here because the sheep need to be counted to tell the rangers how the herd is doing. Are they surviving? Are lambs being born? The sheep you see, or don’t see, will help the data base of the rangers who are trying to bring these ancient animals back from the brink.
For the past 20 years, officials have put out the annual call for volunteers to spend three summer days in strategic places to count sheep. Volunteers bring their own gear and camp out near water holes where it is hoped the heat will force the sheep to come down to drink and be counted. (Last year, 131 sheep were counted.)
It would be much more comfortable to count in winter, of course, but that wouldn’t work because there’s enough vegetation to provide bighorn with the liquids they need. The assumption is that hot desert temperatures will drive each sheep to water once every three days.
When volunteers meet June 29 for orientation in the air-conditioned conference room of the Anza-Borrego Desert Park Rangers’ Headquarters, the task will sound like a breeze. Then you get down to details, like the names of the locations--”Hellhole Canyon” among them--which give you an idea of what your predecessors felt about them.
The rangers will tell you to bring binoculars, a beach chair, a good book and lots of water, at least a gallon each a day. You can dehydrate and die extra quickly in these places.
Last year, I joined our team at the end of the first day. Our four-wheel-drive vehicle took us to the base of the optimistically named Sheep Canyon. After about an hour’s climb, we stopped at a little recess where our team leader, Miramar College professor Rick Matthews and three of his biology students had set up a canopied shelter. If I had had more breath I would have uttered, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Instead, I flopped down and took another guzzle from the already hot water in my bag.
The chair turned out to be a mixed blessing. Hauling the thing up and down a mountain while it clanged against my ankles and caught on every rock while weighing me down, made me long for the short-term pleasure of hurling it down the canyon. Maybe the noise would frighten a bighorn out of hiding.
But when I got to the top, and laid out the chair and flopped into it, I took it all back.
Last year, about 65 people volunteered for this project, including students, teachers, grandparents, a TV weather-plane pilot, a veteran Special Forces medic--and Lysa.
Lysa attached herself to our group. She was a kind of wordly-wise flower child, as L.A. as they get. She said she took publicity stills on movie locations, rebelled from her rich movie-folk parents and often went planting giant sequoias with L.A.’s TreePeople when she was not out here.
And fit? Like a gazelle. While others--OK, me--huffed and puffed, her aerobics and dancing lessons obviously paid off. She pranced from rock to rock as though this was moon gravity with Marshall Tucker playing “Fire on the Mountain” on her Walkman. Every few rocks she’d stop, bring out a pink “Eau d’Evian” spray can and squirt her face.
The days seemed incredibly long: We start at 5 a.m. to catch the cool of the day. When the full heat is on and you’re sure it’s lunchtime, it’s nine o’clock. When it feels like 23 hours must have passed, it’s midday. At least on a chain gang you can wile away the hours busting rocks. Here we just stared at the rocks until they and the sky above started shimmering and spinning like one of Van Gogh’s madder landscapes.
Every so often someone would scrape around for a pair of binoculars, stand up and scan the rocks. Or we’d scan “Field Identification Guide” which showed the obvious differences between a ewe and a ram, and a yearling ewe and a mature ewe (“Chest size not deep and full yet . . . face looks more dished”).
But there was nothing about identification of rocks, which somehow seemed more relevant. Of course, the sheep could all be there and we weren’t seeing them. As a previous counter wrote: “The sheep are the size, shape and color of rocks. Most of the rocks are the size, shape and color of sheep.”
On the other hand, evidence points at the other explanation: There simply aren’t many sheep left.
Bighorn sheep are suffering from humans. Mining, ranching, farming and, now, off-road vehicles have taken away territory and ruined water holes. Hunters looking for the rams’ magnificent curly horns also have wrought havoc.
Bighorn have been officially protected since 1873 but when a large ram can, as word has it, fetch $50,000 to decorate a Santa Fe-style mansion, poaching comes as no surprise. The problem is particularly bad in Baja California.
But feral cattle have turned out to be the worst enemy. They have wandered into the desert for years, veritable reservoirs of viruses that infect sheep; 17 different diseases have been identified in them. So park rangers have been helicoptering out feral cattle one by one.
Add to that the drought--last year’s 1.75 inches of rainfall was the lowest ever recorded--and these wild sheep have it tough.
And that’s why volunteers from all walks of life keep coming here, some for as many as 20 years.
If the bighorn don’t survive, it’ll be one of those unsung but massive tragedies. It’ll be one more piece of Mother Earth that disappears if we lose the sheep which have been here since this desert was a bog in the days when the woolly mammoth used to roam. Like the coyote, they have survived as their world turned to desert.
As the sun finally sets with the supposed sheep still just a drawing on the fact sheet, you’ll be comforted by the thought that tomorrow is another day, and it’s going to be just as, uh, wonderful as today.
You’ll wonder if these sheep appreciate what you’re going through for them, whether they realize that at least up here, now, they have friends in high places.
At this moment, you’ll never believe that after three days of this, even if you don’t see one, you’ll leave with the irreplaceable feeling that at least you’ve done something to help stop the bighorn’s extinction--a hope considered impossible just a few short years ago.
And if you happen to actually spot a bighorn, or even a herd of them, it’ll be like suddenly seeing Marilyn Monroe or Robert Redford. You’ll never forget it.
If you are interested in volunteering for the bighorn count in Anza-Borrego July 4-7, an orientation will be held June 29 at Anza - Borrego Desert State Park headquarters in Borrego Springs. Call naturalist Mark Jorgensen at (619) 767-5311 for more information.
