The pronghorn was once Washington’s own antelope, a resident of the shrub-steppe east of the Cascades, and its 55 modern records show it edging back onto that ground. Okanogan County holds 27 of them, with Benton, Klickitat, and Douglas accounting for most of the rest: the open rangeland of the Columbia Plateau.
Built for open country
Everything about a pronghorn assumes distance. It is the fastest land mammal in North America, with eyes like binoculars set high on the head and a diet built on sagebrush, forbs, and grasses cropped in country too open to hide in. Fences, farms, and tree cover all work against it, which is why its Washington story has always belonged to the treeless plateau.
A spring and fall presence
Washington records crest in May and again in October and drop to nothing in November and December. Pronghorn shift seasonally across their range, bunching and drifting as snow and forage change, and the state’s animals move the same way across the plateau, most visible where big open basins let a watcher pick out an animal a mile off.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the pronghorn SX, Presumed Extirpated, in Washington, marking its loss from the state in the early twentieth century. Small numbers have since been returned to Washington’s shrub-steppe, and the recent record shows the species back on the Columbia Plateau, though its hold here remains thin. The species is treated as native to its Washington range, and the IUCN lists it globally as Least Concern.
Full species profile
