A Peninsular bighorn sheep died after getting tangled in razor wire along the California-Mexico border, and Christina Aiello found the body Wednesday morning in Imperial County’s Jacumba Wilderness. Photos and video she shared showed bladed wire wrapped around the adult male’s neck, curved horns and front legs.
The death immediately put a sharp edge on a fight that has been building for months along the border. California Department of Fish and Wildlife bighorn sheep specialists confirmed from the images that the ram died after becoming entangled in the wire, and Aiello said the loss was hard to absorb because she and others had warned that this could happen. “It’s frustrating and sad but at the same time expected,” she said, adding that “we literally said that this was the risk, this was likely to happen, and our concerns were kind of ignored.”
That warning has been circulating since federal forces began stringing hundreds of miles of concertina wire along the border last fall. Steve Gonzalez of the state wildlife agency said CDFW had made clear to the federal government that border wall construction poses serious risks to protected wildlife, including bighorn sheep. The endangered Peninsular herd moves through the rugged Jacumba Wilderness, where the border cuts across habitat and migration routes that wildlife advocates have spent years trying to protect.
The federal side has defended the wire as a security tool. A Joint Task Force-Southern Border spokesperson said it is part of a necessary, strategic effort to discourage and prevent illicit movement across the border, and said the large coils are easier for people and animals to see. The spokesperson also said the bulkier design helps prevent accidental wildlife entanglement because it does not sag like single-strand wire, a claim that now sits in direct conflict with the dead sheep found embedded in it.
Aiello’s concern was not abstract. Edie Harmon learned in early November that Marines were stringing wire in Skull Valley and alerted stakeholders, including Aiello, who said she was worried about how the barrier would affect a herd that migrates across the border. She said the ewes give birth on the U.S. side in winter and spring, then cross into Mexico in summer to seek water. Harmon had been documenting border wall activity in the Jacumba Wilderness since 2020, and more than two dozen organizations and individuals have followed the issue as the wire spread across the borderlands.
What happens next is still unclear, but the death has already sharpened the question wildlife advocates have been pressing: how many other animals are moving through the same wire and not making it out. For now, the ram found by Aiello stands as a visible, fatal answer to a concern that had been raised before the animal died.
