The Land and Wildlife

The Land and Wildlife

Scott Copeland

The Red Desert is a vast, rugged land of beauty, wildness, and solitude - a scenic landscape of national significance.

…with sweeping vistas, volcanic buttes, iconic badlands, unique geology, world-class night skies, and the largest living sand dune complex in North American, containing the greatest concentration of BLM wilderness study areas in Wyoming.

Bob Wick/BLM/Flickr

Boar’s Tusk and the
Killpecker Sand Dunes

Nick Wegner

The Oregon Buttes and
Wind River Mountains
in the background

Continental Peak and the Honeycomb Buttes

Wyoming Wilderness Association

Ecoflight

Table Mountains

The Red Desert is a land of varied habitats supporting a diversity of wildlife.

Sagebrush steppe – laced with springs and aspen stands, desert badlands, buttes and mountain rims, and unique ephemeral ponds within the Sand Dunes – support important habitats for big game herds, other resident mammals, nesting and migrating birds, and reptiles and amphibians.

The Red Desert provides important habitats for big game herds –

  • critical winter range and the southern anchor for the world’s longest mule deer migration

  • winter range and migration routes for the state’s largest pronghorn herd

  • the largest desert elk herd in Wyoming

Steamboat Mountain, rising over 9,000 feet in elevation, provides important habitats for migrating mule deer and calving grounds for elk.

Mason Cumming/The Wilderness Society

BLM WY/Flickr

The Red Desert’s undeveloped character is a haven for the Greater Sage-Grouse, Burrowing Owls, Mountain Plovers and other iconic species.

Its wild landscapes serve as natural benchmarks for monitoring ecological change, help to harbor rare plants, and provide seasonally important habitats to a broad range of wildlife.

WY Game and Fish Department

Ecoflight

Dunal ponds emerge in the spring and summer throughout the Sand Dunes as winter snow – covered and insulated by shifting sands – slowly melts out.