{"id":42545,"date":"2025-07-28T12:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/42545\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T12:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:02:12","slug":"when-the-water-goes-away-it-goes-away-nvs-desert-wildlife-cant-keep-up-with-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/42545\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018When the water goes away, it goes away\u2019 \u2014 NV\u2019s desert wildlife can\u2019t keep up with drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been five years since Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) staff specialist Joe Bennett spotted 20 dead bighorn sheep near a guzzler while flying over Southern Nevada. The manmade water source had run dry, and the sheep, reliant on it for water, had died within 40 feet of the failed water source.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the worst day of my career,\u201d he said. \u201cThe next day, we were hauling water.\u201d<\/p>\n

The situation was, on one hand, an anomaly \u2014 Southern Nevada\u2019s bighorn sheep are highly adapted to the region\u2019s harsh climate, and they\u2019ve largely avoided illnesses plaguing other sheep herds across the state.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the death of dozens of sheep represented what climate, wildlife and other experts say they are seeing day after day across the Southern Nevada desert \u2014 desert-adapted wildlife feeling the toll of abnormally dry conditions carrying on season after season, and not enough relief through monsoons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou start seeing mortality in plants and animals,\u201d said David Simeral, associate climatology research scientist at the Desert Research Institute. \u201cThe ones that can move, move. Plants can\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Las Vegas area only pulls about 20 percent of its precipitation from the summer storms, Simeral said; but when Southern Nevada misses out on its monsoonal moisture, desert vegetation and animals, despite being adapted to the climate, hit their thresholds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The vegetation turns crispy; animals that rely on the vegetation for moisture don\u2019t get it, Bennett said, requiring even more water to digest the dry roughage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like eating crackers without a drink of water,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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\nLeft: A desert bighorn sheep rests in a trailer after being processed during a capture and translocation operation run by the Nevada Department of Wildlife in Valley of Fire State Park on June 10, 2025. Center: A desert bighorn sheep is tagged; by capturing and relocating 139 sheep, NDOW hopes to reduce overexploitation of water and forage resources. Right: Two desert bighorn sheep are ferried by helicopter to base camp for processing. (Daniel Clark\/The Nevada Independent)<\/p>\n

\u2018We need Mother Nature to do its part\u2019<\/p>\n

Those who spend time in the desert see the nuanced differences between the seasons when the rains come and when they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the spring when we actually get rain, we are actually pretty green,\u201d said Doug Nielsen, conservation education southern region supervisor for NDOW. \u201cMost people don\u2019t equate the Mojave with being green, but in the wet years it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

But recently, that green hasn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can drive across the desert and see a difference in a year like this and a year when we get water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Plants such as desert-adapted creosote are brittle; there isn\u2019t a blanket of dodder covering the ground. For the sheep, that\u2019s the equivalent of having a poorly stocked pantry or supermarket, he said: \u201cYou don\u2019t have the quality groceries here.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past winter, state wildlife biologists started seeing a worrying number of bighorn sheep hovering around guzzlers across Southern Nevada, particularly in the Black and Muddy mountains outside Las Vegas. Reliant on the guzzlers for water, the sheep were unable to forage far from the manmade water sources \u2014 a bad sign.<\/p>\n

So, NDOW started hauling in water, ultimately moving 122,000 gallons of water into various Southern Nevada mountain ranges including the Muddys and Blacks at the cost of $10,000 to $15,000 per day, Bennett said.<\/p>\n

The effort marked the fifth consecutive winter of hauling water in for the sheep.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easier to add water than anything else,\u201d said Nielsen, but it was becoming \u201ctruly unsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, NDOW made news<\/a> when it aerially captured 139 sheep from Southern Nevada\u2019s Muddy and Black mountains \u2014 people were captivated by the $1.2 million project to relocate the sheep to other areas throughout Nevada and Utah. (The project was funded by various nonprofits and foundations.)<\/p>\n

And while the department relocated those sheep, there are still hundreds in the Black and Muddy mountains searching for water and forage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a chance that come August, we are hauling more water,\u201d Bennett said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The department plans to issue more hunting tags in the fall to help lower populations, and it\u2019s likely more sheep will need to be relocated next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only so much intervention we can do,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need Mother Nature to do its part.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problems in the Black and Muddy mountains are part of a broader issue of ongoing water shortages across the Southwest.<\/p>\n

Satellite data shows that groundwater is rapidly declining<\/a> in the Colorado River Basin. The parched ground absorbs runoff from the snowpack, in part reducing the amount of water that flows into the river. This year, despite receiving a near-normal snowpack, less than half<\/a> of that water flowed into the Colorado River.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Up against ever-shrinking reservoir levels along the river, water managers are struggling to come to an agreement on how to divvy up the Colorado River\u2019s dwindling resources before an October 2026 deadline<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Arizona, a state facing extreme levels of drought<\/a> and potentially some of the most painful cuts depending on the results of the Colorado River negotiations, could benefit from a proposal by a Los Angeles-based company to pump groundwater from California\u2019s Mojave Desert and sell it to the Grand Canyon State; the plan\u2019s idea is endorsed by the federal administration<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the increasingly arid area, there just isn\u2019t enough water to go around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A graph from the U.S. Drought Monitor depicts the location and intensity of drought across the country since 2000. (Courtesy\/U.S. Drought Monitor)<\/p>\n

\u2018With wildlife, when the water goes away, it goes away\u2019<\/p>\n

Spurred by a seasonal wind shift, the North American monsoon<\/a> season brings thunderstorms to the desert Southwest and outer areas such as Nevada, Wyoming and Texas. In years with strong monsoons, such as 2022, the ninth wettest in 130 years of recordkeeping, drought conditions improved in many areas.<\/p>\n

While there\u2019s still a long way to go in this year\u2019s monsoon season \u2014 it runs from mid-June to the end of September \u2014 the state saw its 16th driest June on record. The previous 11 months were among Southern Nevada\u2019s driest since 1895<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And while summer monsoons don\u2019t provide substantial precipitation in terms of reservoir storage, they are needed to provide relief to the region\u2019s plants and animals that can\u2019t just turn on a tap to access water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a region known for its lack of rainfall \u2014 Las Vegas averages just over 4 inches of rain per year \u2014 some pockets of Southern Nevada have received notable rainfall so far.<\/p>\n

In May, the city received about 1.5 inches<\/a> of rain, breaking a monthly record last set in 1969, and since the middle of June, areas in northwest Las Vegas have received as much as 1.25 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But other areas, such as around Harry Reid International Airport, have received just .02 inches since mid-June.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extremes are just becoming more extreme,\u201d Simeral said.<\/p>\n

A graph from the U.S. Drought Monitor<\/a> shows that, in Nevada, droughts generally come in multiyear waves, interspersed with a year or two of good precipitation. The most recent graph, which tracks back to 2000, shows a red line over 2025 \u2014 if the past few decades are any indicator, Nevada could be at the start of an upcoming, extended dry spell.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t bode well for plants, wildlife and people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a world where we walk into the other room and flip a tap and water comes out,\u201d Nielsen said. \u201cBut the wildlife out on the wildlands, they don\u2019t have that luxury. With wildlife, when the water goes away, it goes away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A desert bighorn sheep is carried to the processing tent during a capture and translocation operation run by the Nevada Department of Wildlife in Valley of Fire State Park on June 10, 2025. (Daniel Clark\/The Nevada Independent)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been five years since Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) staff specialist Joe Bennett spotted 20 dead bighorn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-42545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}