BRN 9-4 - Flipbook - Page 33
Above: Looking southeast down Sulphur Pass from Pilot
Knob on the Chalk Hills. Kaylor, Block, O–ate, and San
Andres Mountains are on the distant skyline.
and black bear also live here. We found one record of a
jaguar that was reportedly seen by a government hunter in
these mountains in 1937, but no records of grizzly bears or
wolves. These mountains might contain some yet
undiscovered species of small vertebrates, invertebrates and
plants owing to the broad expanses of the Tularosa Basin
and Jornada del Muerto which separate them from other
mountain masses to the east and west.
The San Andres Mountain Range is a huge protected
ecosystem complete with the large mammals that lived here
for millennia, including mule deer, desert bighorn sheep,
pronghorn, and javelina, and the predators those animals
coevolved with, the puma and coyote. To a lesser extent, elk
[Ed. note: As indicated by the authors, above, the
possibility exists that ÒThese mountains might contain
some yet undiscovered species of small vertebratesÉ.Ó
There is also the possibility that they harbor species which
have not been recorded in the area.
One such species might be the Organ Mountains Colorado
Chipmunk (Neotamias quadrivittatus australis) or another
subspecies of Colorado Chipmunk. The Organ Mountains
Colorado Chipmunk is known only from the Organ
Mountains. There are populations of Colorado Chipmunk
in the mountains east of Socorro (across the Rio Grande).
In between? No reports. Maybe there are none, maybe
the Organ Mountain population is truly disjunct. Maybe
not. What lies between the two populations: the San
Andres Mountains.
In the April 2025 issue (Vol. 8, No. 2) of this journal we
explored the natural history of this subspecies based on a
series of observations by James Von Loh, who took the
photograph to the right.]
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