Pronghorn

You could be forgiven for thinking that this mammal is actually an antelope, many people colloquially refer to it as the American antelope, prong buck, pronghorn antelope, prairie antelope, or simply antelope, it is in fact the only surviving member of the family Antilocapridae, making it quite a unique animal of North America.

Pre-European settlement of North America saw large numbers of pronghorns hunted as a principal food source by America’s indigenous peoples. Although first described by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, they would not be formally recorded or scrutinized until an 1804–1806 expedition by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark, with Clark being the first European to kill a pronghorn.

Their abundance on the North American continent continued to diminished over the following century, the wildlife conservation group Boone and Crockett Club at the turn of the 20th century even predicted that the pronghorn would likely become extinct. It wouldn’t be until December 31, 1936, that the true beginning for pronghorn recovery in North America would happen, when president Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order creating a 549,000-acre tract for them.