Some biologists fear that if the Sonoran pronghorn population drops to around 50, that will spell extinction for the subspecies. There are several factors that threaten the Sonoran pronghorn s survival, and sadly, biologists don t understand all of them as well as we want to. As I just mentioned, one of the primary problems is the very low number of fawns who survive to adulthood. Droughts and lack of sufficient forage to support the pronghorn seems to be a major factor in fawn recruitment. Of course, this affects adult pronghorn survival as well.
Predation is also a problem.
Coyotes, mountain lions, and bobcats have all been known to eat pronghorn. Most of these pressures on Sonoran pronghorn are natural threats, but because the Sonoran pronghorn so extremely rare, problems such as low fawn recruitment are even more devastating to this already imperiled species. Other threats to Sonorans result directly from human activity. Illegal hunting, for example, has been an occasional problem, although it poses a far greater threat to the Sonoran pronghorn that live in Mexico. Livestock grazing in the Southwest s desert grasslands has allowed the vegetation to change and has caused erosion in Sonoran pronghorn habitat, both of which have probably reduced the availability of the forage plants Sonoran pronghorn need to survive.