Utah’s pronghorn record is one of the deepest in this atlas, 2279 records spread across the basins and plateaus of the state’s open country. One island dominates the map: Antelope Island State Park, in the Great Salt Lake, holds 543 records on its own, driving Davis County’s state-leading 720, while Garfield, Grand, Emery, and Tooele counties carry the wide scatter of sagebrush and grassland that defines pronghorn range.
Built for open country
The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in North America, able to hold speeds near 55 miles per hour, with oversized eyes that pick up movement at long distances. Speed and eyesight only pay off where the view is unbroken, so Utah’s records sit exactly where they should: the flats around Goblin Valley State Park, the open high country near Bryce Canyon National Park, the canyon benches of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Arches National Park, and out to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. Sagebrush, forbs, and grasses make up most of the diet, and pronghorn feed comfortably in low brushy ground that deer tend to pass over.
Fawns out in the open
Records crest from April through June, when does drop their fawns, most often twins, on the spring range. Newborns lie still in low vegetation for their first weeks, then join their mothers in loose nursery bands by midsummer. Pronghorn stay on Utah’s landscape year-round; late fall and winter records simply thin as animals bunch up on winter range and bucks shed the outer sheath of their horns after the rut.
Status in Utah
NatureServe ranks the pronghorn S4, Apparently Secure, in Utah, and the species is native to the state. Utah animals belong to the widespread nominate subspecies, not the endangered Sonoran pronghorn of southern Arizona and Mexico. USGS NAS does not list the pronghorn as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
