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Atop the Verde River aquifer sits one of Arizona’s big open grasslands, a relatively roadless area which supports Arizona’s last, large herd of pronghorn.

The area—called the Big Chino Valley, outside of Prescott—is also home to one of the state’s most vibrant cattle-ranching communities.

And a new alliance is working to save the land that sustains both the pronghorn and the ranchers. The Big Chino Pronghorn Partnership (.pdf, 39 kb) is a collaborative effort between Big Chino Valley Ranchers, The Nature Conservancy and other conservation partners in the valley.

Together, they are working to create "movement maps" of the pronghorn by collaring pronghorn and tracking their movements by satellite. The data will help landowners and land-use planners to better site roads and other development projects.

Nature.org spoke with Heather Reading, field representative in land and water protection for The Nature Conservancy's North America Region, about what it takes to track one of the fastest land mammals on Earth.

Nature.org:

Heather Reading:

Pronghorn need to roam. Roads, poorly-planned development and other infrastructure stop them dead in their tracks. You can see that in our first year of pronghorn mapping, where all the dots bunch up by paved roads.

Nature.org:

Heather Reading:

Area ranchers allow the Big Chino Partnership to capture and collar pronghorn. To date we’ve collared 24. We do this using the best veterinary science available, darting the animals by helicopter with a mild sedative, collaring them and then protecting them until they are back to normal. We then track them via satellite.

Nature.org:

Heather Reading:

Each dot represents one pronghorn. Collectively, they show us how the animals move through this big open land. This is important because if paved roads are planned, we can show the road planners where to create migration passages for the pronghorn.

Nature.org:

Heather Reading:

The ranchers know so much about this area, and they are intrigued to learn more about the pronghorn. The ranchers now see them up close and over the years. But no one can understand how they move over time without this level of technology.

Nature.org:

Heather Reading:

The longer I study pronghorn, the more amazed I am by them. Pronghorn evolved to escape an ancient, North American cheetah, and even today they can outrun an African cheetah over long distances. They are built for speed. With eyes larger than their brains, they can see almost as far as a peregrine falcon can – up to four miles. They can run across a football field in three seconds flat.

Nature.org:

Heather Reading:

The vision of the Big Chino Pronghorn Partnership is to protect these open lands that have been so carefully cared for by generations of ranchers. If we can protect the Big Chino Valley and save it from fragmentation, then we save wildlife, ways of life, and water for people and nature.

Heather Reading is a field representative in land and water protection for The Nature Conservancy. Based in the Verde Program field office, she is a Chino Valley native, working with local land owners to secure land and waters for generations to come.