Arizona’s big-game corridors include the historic Kaibab mule deer herd (Aldo Leopold’s famous case study) plus elk migrations that cross interstates 17 and 40, and pronghorn herds on Anderson Mesa and the high plateaus. This map shows every USGS-mapped big-game migration corridor in Arizona — 13 herd units, 198 GPS-collared animals, and 522 tracked migration segments, recorded between 2006 and 2021.
Click any corridor or stopover for herd-level stats. Toggle species on and off in the controls above the map, or pick a featured corridor lower on the page to load real GPS tracks onto the map.
Big-game migration in Arizona by the numbers
- 13 mapped herd units
- 198 individual animals tracked by GPS collar
- 522 GPS migration tracks recorded between 2006 and 2021
- 9,206 km² of migration corridor identified
- 5 stopovers — critical rest and refuel sites along the corridors
Species tracked in Arizona
- Elk — 5 herd units mapped in Arizona
- Mule Deer — 4 herd units mapped in Arizona
- Pronghorn — 4 herd units mapped in Arizona
Famous migration corridors in Arizona
Kaibab Mule Deer
The historic North Rim of the Grand Canyon herd — subject of Aldo Leopold’s landmark conservation writings. 48 animals tracked between 2012 and 2020.
Every tracked herd unit in Arizona
The complete list of USGS-mapped herd units that include Arizona. Cross-border herds shared with neighbouring states are included.
- Elk: Interstate17 herd — 47 tracked animals, 2006–2013
- Elk: North Interstate40 herd — 18 tracked animals, 2009–2011
- Elk: San Francisco Peaks herd — 6 tracked animals, 2009–2017
- Elk: South Interstate40 herd — 0 tracked animals, —
- Elk: State Route260 herd — 0 tracked animals, —
- Mule Deer: Kaibab North herd — 48 tracked animals, 2012–2020
- Mule Deer: Rainbow Valley herd — 3 tracked animals, 2019–2020
- Mule Deer: San Francisco Peaks herd — 24 tracked animals, 2008–2020
- Mule Deer: South Interstate40 herd — 7 tracked animals, 2020–2021
- Pronghorn: Anderson Mesa herd — 0 tracked animals, —
- Pronghorn: Big Lake herd — 8 tracked animals, 2013–2015
- Pronghorn: North Interstate40 herd — 16 tracked animals, 2014–2017
- Pronghorn: South Interstate40 herd — 21 tracked animals, 2018–2019
What threatens migration corridors in Arizona
Across the West, the biggest threats to big-game migrations are not the things that kill individual animals — they’re the things that fragment the corridor itself. Energy development, road crossings, fences and subdivision of winter range have all been documented as drivers of corridor loss in this dataset. State wildlife agencies, the USGS Corridor Mapping Team, and conservation NGOs are now using maps like this one to guide decisions about where to build wildlife crossings, where to replace woven-wire fences, and where to prioritise conservation easements on private winter range.
Explore further
This page is part of MapScaping’s western big-game migration series. See the Western US Big Game Migration Map for the complete dataset across all ten states, or browse a different state:
