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For The New York Times, I sprinted across the deserts of Arizona, chasing after pronghorn, elk, and mule deer with a helicopter, a net gun, and a team of ex-rodeo bull riders. Armed with tracking collars, we were on a mission to understand how the energy transition is affecting migration corridors for these animals.
The 'muggers,' as they’re called, use a net gun to capture the animals from the helicopter, then wrangle them on the ground to fit them with tracking collars. Once the helicopter landed, I had about five minutes to race across the piñon-juniper landscape to capture the scene.
I learned that pronghorn, unlike other animals, are poor jumpers. On the 700,000-acre Babbitt Ranch near the Grand Canyon, ranchers are redoing their fence lines, adding PVC pipes to the bottom rungs to ensure pronghorn can still migrate freely.
Read more about how our energy grid, fence lines, and highways have disrupted generations of animal migration across the West.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/11/climate/climate-change-wildlife-solar.html