Mammals

Four mountain lions captured by remote camera in the park

NPS Photo

Recent biological inventories show that Coronado National Memorial has a great diversity of mammal species; there are 44 species of terrestrial mammals and 11 species of bats. This is probably due to a number of factors: the presence of thick grassland vegetation in ungrazed areas, which supports many species of rodents; the memorial’s location in the Huachuca Mountains, which are very diverse for biogeographic reasons; and the memorial’s connectivity to other natural areas nearby, including the Huachucas, the San Pedro River, and undeveloped areas in Mexico.

As a small but significant block of protected land at the southern end of the Huachucas, the memorial undoubtedly plays an important role as a refugium for many mammals, including not only grassland species, but also game animals such as deer and predators such as mountain lions. Because of this, the memorial may also play a role in any return of species that are presently extirpated from the area. Indeed, the reintroduction of Gould’s turkeys in the Huachucas and other mountain ranges in Southeast Arizona between 1983 and 2006 is an unheralded sucess story of a native species thriving after it had been eliminated from the area a century earlier.

Black-tailed prairie dogs, which probably occurred in or near the memorial earlier in this century, continue to persist over the border in Mexico just a few miles south of the Huachucas. It is not impossible that this species could naturally recolonize protected grassland areas of the memorial sometime in the future. In addition, the memorial provides a potential refugium for jaguars, ocelots, and gray wolves moving northward, should these species increase in number. For the larger mammals, the memorial does not have sufficient area to contain the entire home range for even a small population, thus they would depend on the surrounding natural areas.