Megafauna Aliens of the Borderlands
Oryx © Jon Rezendes
Non-human aliens have invaded the borderland. Not Roswellian bipedal humanoids in physics-defying UFOs, but megafauna. West Texas and southern New Mexico have been overrun by invasive ungulates. Their origin, their uncontrolled pervasiveness, and the insufficient response in both states exemplify the on-going mismanagement in their bipolar opposite politics. Rewilding represents a key piece of the solution.
This story begins at White Sands Missile Range, 3,200 square miles of southern New Mexico, including the world’s largest expanse of gypsum dunes now partially preserved as a national park, and home to both the first nuclear test site and the oldest preserved human footprints in the Western Hemisphere. Fifty years ago, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, in Frank C. Hibben’s limited wisdom, released an experimental population of oryx (Oryx gazella) in Red Rocks, New Mexico, whose offspring were then freed for trophy hunting on the missile range through a loophole in federal law. Now, as many as ten thousand oryx roam across southern New Mexico, south into west Texas and as far west as the Arizona border. These bovid-antelopes average a weight of 450-lbs and come armed with dual meter-long horns meant to fend off lions. They face no such challenge in the US, having limited habitat overlap with basin-avoiding mountain lions. One mountain lion at Ted Turner’s Armendaris Ranch was noted to kill twenty-nine oryx, 58% of its diet, but that is an exception and not the rule. These wide-ranging Kalahari-natives are perfectly adapted to the Chihuahuan Desert, prolifically breed without a rut or season, and outcompete both mule deer and pronghorn. They also thrive on native grasses and yucca while spreading mesquite pods and assisting in the succession of arid shrubland over grassland. The oryx’s indomitability even led the National Park Service to build their own corridor-killing 67-mile boundary fence in 1996 to keep the animals out of the park, a necessary short-term but counter-intuitive long-term solution.
Aoudad, Courtesy of the Borderland Research Institute and D. Karelus
Meanwhile, Texas has embraced a different herbivore from the opposite end of the African continent: the aoudad (Ammotragus lervia). This sheep-goat’s immigration story is even older and more complex than the oryx, with forty individuals released in Texas’s Palo Duro Canyon in the late 1950s and a different herd introduced on a private ranch outside Roswell (ironic) in the 1960s. Those two releases contributed two separate subspecies to the American population, creating a sometimes-hybridized 300-lb mountain-dwelling ungulate that is hardier, more virile, and better suited to lowland areas than native desert bighorn sheep. These qualities, along with the draw of the exotic, have made aoudad hunts extremely popular in West Texas. Defunct and dry ranches are now parceled out into hunting communities where short money gets one a small plot of personal space within the boundaries of the larger, huntable area. Over 30,000 strong, aoudad are now the dominant species of the Trans-Pecos as they outcompete bighorn and mule deer alike. While mountain lions do predate on aoudad, they represent the big cat’s most difficult alpine hunt in the region (lions are also year-round open game in West Texas, unnaturally suppressing their numbers). Some rugged places of the New Mexico-Texas border like the 1.12-million-acre Fort Bliss Military Reservation deal with both invaders simultaneously. Worst of all, these pioneering survivors thrive even where feralized domestics cannot: aoudads astride impenetrable bajada canyons and oryx across the most desolate of jornadas.
As is their nature, governments have turned these animals into a revenue-generating commodity. In blue New Mexico, a state abundant with public land, concerned hunters seeking to remove these exotics have to deal with long-odds lotteries and exorbitant fees from over-regulation. In red Texas, exotics are open season, but the near-universality of private land means comparably-priced four- and five-figure guided hunts where the government garners their tithes from taxation on the multi-million dollar hunting economy rather than directly from permitting and fees. Organizations like the Borderlands Research Institute from Sul Ross University and the Jornada Experimental Range from New Mexico State University are beginning to study the effects exotics have on native species, but powerbrokers in both states have no incentive to change the status quo until research can quantify the negative cost on the landscape.
Aoudad with Mountain Lion Scars, Courtesy of Davis Mountains State Park and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
What solutions do concerned conservationists have to combat these challenges when the state governments themselves offer none? Support the reintroduction of native predators. Powerful panthers like the lion and leopard and social canids like the painted dog represent some of the top predators in their native range. The northern Chihuahuan Desert sorely lacks two of its apex predators: the Mexican gray wolf and the jaguar. Packs of lobos would harangue herds throughout the Tularosa Basin and Texas canyonlands. Waiting jaguar ambushes at desert watering holes would restore the ecology of fear and dramatically alter unimpeded breeding around those now-safe limited resources. Even greater protection for cliff-dwelling Trans-Pecos mountain lions would increase their numbers to sustainable populations and help cull the aoudad.
Predator reintroductions alone are not sufficient and come with their own set of complicated politics and elongated timelines. Aoudad and oryx both face steep decline in their native range. These wild American populations can and should provide a base for reintroduction into receptive African nations as part of a comprehensive State Department program that supports the preservation of wilderness everywhere: a Rooseveltian Dream, both red and blue.
Oryx, Organ Mountain Foothills © Jon Rezendes
For further reading, check out these organizations conducting scientific research in the area: Borderlands Research Institute, Jornada Experimental Range, and Indio Mountain Research Station. These NGOs are supporting native predator reintroduction and protection in the area: Texans for Mountain Lions, Northern Jaguar Project, Texas Lobo Coalition, and Center for Biological Diversity.
Jon Rezendes is a former US Army infantry combat veteran, Ranger Instructor, and graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Since leaving service, Jon works for a decarbonization-focused software company and dedicates his life to the preservation of wilderness with his wife, a certified associate wildlife biologist and PhD student, and their two children. In his spare time, Jon is a member of the Board of Directors of the Texas Lobo Coalition and the Frontera Land Alliance. Visit jonrezendes.com to learn more.
We need to reintroduce more Mexican wolves and jaguars and quit killing the predators. Stop the hunt on mountain lions. Once again man interferes with the ecosystem and we end up with problems. Are these ungulates edible?
The only real solution is to send them back to Africa to rewild those areas, and eliminate them completely from the Americas where they don’t belong. Anything less is inadequate.