Maintaining a Landscape Linkage for Peninsular Bighorn Sheep
This project was undertaken as part of a larger effort to conserve the integrity of the Peninsular Ranges (extending from Southern California to the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula), in the face of increasing sprawl of development inland from the coast, escalating border security infrastructure, and other competing uses for the land. It focuses on the border region of California and Baja California, where the long-term connectivity between federally endangered bighorn sheep in Peninsular Ranges of Southern California and bighorn sheep in Baja California is threatened. The current level of connectivity and the possibilities for maintaining this connectivity in the future are not well understood.
This preliminary study assesses the distribution and habitats of bighorn sheep in the Sierra Juárez in Baja California, just south of the international border, the potential threats to bighorn sheep there, and the threats to this landscape linkage, so as to inform conservation and management strategies for linking protected parklands in both countries.
This document presents the current state of knowledge regarding the distribution of bighorn sheep in the Sierra Juárez and recommends future studies needed to further inform strategies for managing bighorn sheep populations and conserving the wilderness corridor between protected parklands in the U.S. and México.