LIFE IN THE DESERT

On the Fourth of July, ground temperatures in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park can reach 190 degrees; not the best place to spend a holiday weekend. Unless you feel like counting a few sheep. And each year 60 or so volunteers do just that--head into the sunbaked, boulder-strewn mountains above the town of Borrego Springs for the park’s 22nd peninsular bighorn sheep census.

“We don’t try and sugarcoat it,” says Mark Jorgensen, the park’s naturalist and coordinator of the three-day census. “It’s pretty rough out there.”

Two weeks after a daylong orientation in animal identification and behavior, park volunteers gather their maps and census forms and head to their assigned posts near two dozen watering holes, which lure the sheep down from their mountain homes.

“The sites vary,” Jorgensen explains. “Some you can drive right up to, others you have to backpack in as much as five miles, and that’s not easy when it’s 115 degrees.” (Still, there is no shortage of volunteers; this year’s teams have already been selected.)

When the counters arrive at the water holes, they set up their shelters and look for signs of recent sheep activity. Then comes the hard part--waiting. In the desert’s midday heat, the narcotic effect of counting sheep is much more than a cliche.

“We try and have one person stay awake at all times, but dozing off, that’s sort of an accepted part of the sheep count,” says Jorgensen.

The numbers collected by the census-takers provide the 20-year park veteran with the hard data he needs in his fight to save the sheep, which seem to be heading for the endangered species list.

“In the late ‘70s, our estimate was about 1,170 bighorn and now we’re estimating about 380,” says Jorgensen. “Since human interaction has been the major cause of their demise, I feel that human intervention should be a major part of the solution. The census is a first step.”