Bill Overton, a former
game warden from Pine Valley who has attended all but one of the sheep counts,
said this weekend's event was one of his most bountiful.
"We saw more
sheep than I've seen in quite some time" said Overton, 80, who spotted 22 sheep
at Tubb Canyon. "And I'm sure the lambs were larger and healthier, too."
Spotters recorded 38 lambs with 75 ewes in the park, said Jorgensen. Large
numbers of lambs are crucial for the long-term survival of the bighorn because
as much as 90 percent of newborn sheep don't make it through their first
summer, he said.
"Earlier in the spring, that number of lambs wouldn't
be big news. But for this number to be alive on the Fourth of July is really
great," Jorgensen said. "It's a pretty optimistic outlook for lamb
survival.'
Jorgensen said this year's results may indicate a subsiding
of the diseases that have been wracking the bighorn population. However, he
cautioned that it is premature to make any prognosis on the future of the
animals.
"It's probably too early to say if they're; on the road to
recovery," he said.
SO YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE
IN THE
DESERT The following information is excerpted from the article Badlands
by Debra Shore which appeared in the duly 1994 issue of Outside magazine.
Submitted by Bob Sumner
Bureau of Land Management
California
Desert District The Facts
Number of acres:
12,500,000
Number of visitors in 1993: not available
Number
of law-enforcement officers: 60
Average number of weapons encountered
on each person encountered by rangers: 4 Number of guns confiscated in 1993:
150
1994 budget: $17,000,000
Law-enforcement budget:
$2,660,000
Given that a ranger's beat here can cover as
much as a million acres, it's a safe bet that there's a whole lot |
going on that the
authorities never see. Nevertheless, they see plenty: In 1993, rangers
discovered 12 corpses one without a head or fingers - scattered about the
district. In the Barstow Resource Area, where seven of the bodies were found
and where the evidence locker is full of assault weapons, a paramilitary group
called the Confederate Mexican Army has been conducting their boot camp. "Their
goal is to take back Southern California, basically," says ranger Jeny Bronson.
In June 1993, in the Ridgecrest Resource Area, a group of Japanese-Americans,
possibly affiliated with the Japanese Mafia known as the Yakuza, was observed
running armed drills on a mining claim near Red Mountain.
Other
nuisances have included Charles Manson, who was apprehended in the Panamint
Range in 1969; a methamphetamine lab found in the Orocopia Mountains in 1989;
skinheads holding periodic armed rallies in the southern Panamint Valley; and
the instant city that routinely springs up on holiday weekends at Imperial
Dunes, where dune buggies tear up the tuff and their drivers tear up one
another. "They've been riding hard," explains ranger Bob Zimmer, "and they're
dirty, and they just finally piss each other off to the point where they may
stab each other."
The areas off Boulder, Hedge, and Sidewinder Roads in
the Barstow Resource Area. These places have become post-apocalyptic shooting
galleries identifiable by piles of debris - and dead bodies: Three of seven
corpses found in Barstow last year were found here.
Corn Springs, in
the Palm Springs South Coast Resource Area. In the first four months of this
year, rangers seized four sawed-off shotguns and 15 assault weapons here. Two
years ago they dug up a cache of stolen explosives, possibly linked to the
ongoing bombings of wild animals in the area by clubs of "varmints." "They love
to blow up and kill wildlife," marvels ranger John Blachley. "They will shoot
it and then hang it up and continue to shoot it. It's kind of strange."
One Sunday afternoon in December 1993, a visitor from New Zealand was
hiking the Sheep Spring Oasis Trail in the Palm Springs South Coast Resource
Area when he was hailed by someone in a pickup truck claiming to be stalled.
When the hiker approached, he was shot twice in the torso, then robbed of his
shoes and money and left for dead. He managed to drag himself |