Sometimes it is the case, particularly in the winter,
that you can hike for miles in the desert and only
see insects, spiders, and birds. There are usually animals around, but they often
remain hidden and may be few and fair between. For this reason, it is
usually at least somewhat of a treat to see animal life while hiking.
Lizards, snakes, donkeys, bats, coyotes, rodents, and occasional tortoises are the
most likely animals you're likely to come across in the desert, other than
insects and birds. It's somewhat rare to see wild horses, deer, or bobcats and
rarer still are sightings of bighorn sheep and cougars. Certain animals I make
a point of photographing and sometimes I even capture them on video. The
embedded video features some donkeys I came across in Searles Valley earlier
this year. This the largest gathering I've seen in years, in fact.
For some reason videos featuring animals tend to do fairly well on YouTube.
In fact, seven out of my top ten videos feature animals and my donkey,
tortoise, and snake videos have done quite well compared to most of my other
videos. I'm not sure that I have a definitive explanation for this
phenomenon, but I do have some ideas. First, animals aren't threatening.
They don't challenge our beliefs and assumptions about the world. Second,
for some reason, humans tend to find animals inherently interesting.
Finally, animal videos provide a welcome break from people talking to the
camera. Way too many videos on YouTube are nothing more than someone sitting
in front of a camera and talking. Most people aren't terribly interesting to
just sit and listen to.
The number of donkeys out here in Searles Valley and the next valley over, Panamint
Valley, has fluctuated quite a bit in the last twenty years. I recall
seeing extremely large gatherings of donkeys during the 1990s. Although I
didn't count, I'd guess that there may have been as many as one hundred
animals in a gathering I observed in the Panamint Range right around 1994.
During the late 1990s the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decided to remove
donkeys from public lands. The idea was that they displace native animal
species and put stress on various native plants. During the early 2000s
donkeys became scarce with sightings of more than five or so at a time
infrequent. However, during the last three years the numbers have grown
significantly. The group shown in the video on this page included seventeen
donkeys in all, which is the most I've seen in one place since the mid 1990s!
