KOFA Nat’l Wildlife Refuge March 4 ’09
We arrived at the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge on March 4 and immediately fell in love with the lonely landscape. This is a huge area of over 660,000 acres set aside in 1939 for the protection of mainly the desert bighorn sheep. With management and enhancement of natural water holes the population of the bighorn sheep has increased to the point that they have ben transplanted throughout Arizona and neighboring states. With rugged one-track 4-wheel drive roads into the Refuge we were able to explore some of these water holes. The fall rains over Thanksgiving have carpeted the desert with green. Gold, red, orange, purple and white flowers are bursts of color that cannot be duplicated in pictures! It is the bighorn sheep calving season so they are high in the mountains and virtually inaccessible, so we haven’t seen them or any sign of them. The birds however are very active, singing even through the night.
Horse tanks in the Castle Dome mountains. The water holes are typically referred to as 'tanks'.
A millenia of intermittent water flow has streaked this rock. Most water holes are a series of depressions in a natural water flow pattern. The Fish & Wildlife Dept. has dammed some of the flow to enlarge the water holes and increase the availability and reliability of water in this desert landscape.