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CABEZA PRIETA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ariz. (AP) - Federal wildlife biologist Mike Coffeen is ecstatic these days. His efforts to save North America's fastest mammal — the endangered Sonoran pronghorn — are succeeding beyond expectations.
Five years after drought whittled the deer-like animal's population to a handful, pushing it to the brink of extinction, its numbers are back above 100.
Biologists are especially encouraged by the 18 fawns born within the past three months in a square-mile captive breeding enclosure within this sprawling national refuge in southern Arizona — what Coffeen calls "our disaster ace in the hole."
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