The historic North Rim of the Grand Canyon herd — subject of Aldo Leopold’s landmark conservation writings.
- 48 individual animals GPS-collared and tracked
- 123 migration tracks recorded
- Tracking span: 2012–2020
- Average migration distance: ~63 km
- Longest single recorded track: 267 km
- Mapped corridor area: 1,952 km²
The map below shows the herd’s migration corridors and a sample of the GPS tracks behind them. Press play on the slider below the map to animate the migration across the calendar year — watch the tracks pulse with the seasons.
The most-written-about deer herd in conservation history
The Kaibab Plateau, on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, is the setting for one of the most influential conservation case studies ever written. In 1924, after a decades-long predator-control campaign that wiped out the area’s wolves, mountain lions and coyotes, the Kaibab mule deer population exploded to an estimated 100,000 animals — vastly more than the range could support. The starvation crash that followed killed tens of thousands of deer in a single winter and became the foundational story in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, the book that essentially invented modern wildlife management.
The surviving descendants of that herd still make a striking elevation migration each year, dropping off the high Kaibab plateau in October and November to winter in the pinyon-juniper country at lower elevation. The GPS tracks in this dataset show the modern Kaibab herd making essentially the same trip the 1924 deer did — across one of the most spectacular migration landscapes in the United States.
Reading the map
The corridors shown here come from Arizona Game and Fish Department GPS collar work across the Kaibab North herd unit. Press play on the animation to see the herd’s annual cycle: summer use up on the cool, ponderosa-forested plateau; fall migration off the plateau edge in October and November; winter range in the pinyon-juniper at the foot of the cliffs.
Related migration maps
This page is part of MapScaping’s western big-game migration series. See the Western US Big Game Migration Map for the complete dataset, explore migrations by species, or browse other famous corridors.
- Sublette Mule Deer (Red Desert to Hoback)
- Path of the Pronghorn
- Jackson Elk Herd
- Ruby Mountains Mule Deer
- Sheldon-Hart Mountain Pronghorn
- Wyoming Range Mule Deer
- Wind River Mule Deer
