A Peninsular bighorn sheep appears to have died after getting tangled in razor wire installed earlier this year on the California-Mexico border, realizing the fears of wildlife advocates that the security barrier would harm the endangered animals.
On Wednesday morning, Christina Aiello, a wildlife biologist with the Wildlands Network, a conservation group, came across the body of an adult male bighorn embedded in the wire while she was hiking in Imperial County’s rugged Jacumba Wilderness.
Photos and a video Aiello provided show bladed wire snaking around the decomposing animal’s neck and curved horns, as well as the front legs, in a desert landscape dotted with boulders.
“It’s frustrating and sad but at the same time expected,” Aiello said shortly after her discovery. “Because we literally said that this was the risk, this was likely to happen, and our concerns were kind of ignored.”
Starting last fall, federal forces began stringing hundreds of miles of concertina wire along the border. President Trump has vowed to complete the border wall during his second term, and some conservationists have speculated the wire is being used as a placeholder before remaining gaps in the wall get filled in.
It was “part of a necessary, strategic effort to bolster this security by discouraging and preventing illicit movement across this border,” a spokesperson for the Joint Task Force-Southern Border, which provides military support to border operations, told The Times earlier this year.
The wire’s large coils and bulkiness makes it easier for people and animals to see, which “acts as a better deterrent for people and helps prevent animals from accidentally running into the wire or misjudging a jump,” the spokesperson said in a statement. They added that the coils are rigid and don’t sag over time like single-strand wires, “which helps reduce the risk of accidental wildlife entanglement.”
Asked about the bighorn death, Becky Farmer, a spokesperson for the U.S. Northern Command, which oversees the Joint Task Force, said questions should be directed to the Department of Homeland Security because they directed the Department of Defense to install the wire. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an arm of Homeland Security, did not respond by time of publication.
In early November, Edie Harmon, who has documented border wall activity in the Jacumba Wilderness since 2020, learned that Marines were stringing wire in an area called Skull Valley. Harmon alerted stakeholders, including Aiello, who was immediately concerned about how the wire might affect a herd of bighorn sheep that migrates across the border.
The ewes give birth on the U.S. side in the winter and spring, then cross into Mexico to seek water in the punishing summer. Aiello, whose focuses on protecting desert wildlife, fears they’ll be blocked this year. Then there’s the risk on entanglement.
In January, Aiello submitted comments on behalf of more than two dozen organizations and individuals to Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, outlining these concerns and requesting measures to protect the sheep, including removing the wire and putting in openings in the wall large enough for the sheep to pass through.
She said border officials rejected these ideas, but signaled tentative support for watering holes for bighorn, small wildlife passages in the wall and floodgates to be left open during storms. The passages won’t be large enough for bighorn — with their broad horns — to squeeze through, advocates say.
In January, a spokesperson for CBP said it is “committed to environmental stewardship,” while meeting operational requirements, including physical barriers “along all areas deemed necessary to ensure operational control of the border.”
Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, once the face of President Trump’s deportation push, has a fondness for the sheep and advocated for adding a watering hole for them in the past, according to emails obtained by The Times.
This spring, several temporary water sources were put in, an effort led by state and federal wildlife officials, according to Aiello, who helped out as a volunteer. They could be a lifeline for sheep that might get stuck on the U.S. side once the border wall is sealed.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
Aiello has monitored GPS-collared sheep — less than 10% of the population — to see how they’d respond to the razor wire. She has seen that some mill around when they encounter the wire, before turning around. Others crossed over.
“That’s why I was kind of prompted to go check it out,” she said. “I’m like, are they jumping over?”
So she hiked out to just beyond the Valley of the Moon trail, where the wire winds through piles of boulders. That’s where she came across the dead bighorn ram. She didn’t have a necropsy kit to do a detailed assessment, but noticed there wasn’t much blood, which might indicate it had severe gashes and died from blood loss.
“What seemed to me to be the case is that it was really trapped in there, and the exposure and dehydration probably eventually killed it,” she said.
It appears to have died several weeks ago, and it’s not clear if it tried to jump the wire or was simply grazing nearby, she said. It looked healthy and its strength “might have been its downfall,” she added, “As it struggled, it probably got caught more and more.”
Aiello expects more of its kind will suffer similar fates if nothing is done. She said her group has provided border officials with the locations of where bighorn typically cross, and believes the wire should be removed at least from those areas, if they’re not willing to remove it all.
Aiello believes the bollard fence planned for the area will be just as bad as wire over time.
“It’s going to take a while for those effects to unfold, whereas with the razor wire there’s going to be immediate death,” she said.
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