Utah Bighorn Transplant

Big day for bighorns: Mountain sheep get helicopter ride to new domains
By Tom Wharton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 01/03/2008 05:14:29 PM MST


Click photo to enlargeA bighorn sheep is blindfolded Wednesday for its ride from... (Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune)«12»ANTELOPE ISLAND - When California bighorn sheep were brought to this 28,022-acre Great Salt Lake Island in 1997, biologists hoped the herd would not only provide a special wildlife viewing experience for visitors but create a nursery to raise sheep that could be transplanted to other parts of the state.
The idea proved successful in both ways and the legacy of that initial transplant continued on a frosty Wednesday morning near White Rock Bay as volunteers and wildlife biologists gathered to help begin moving up to 55 of the estimated 200 sheep on the island to other nearby Great Basin mountain ranges.
Before Friday is over, officials said they hope to have trapped 35 bighorns using helicopters Bighorn transplant

and nets shot from the air for transplant to the Stansbury Mountain Range about 12 miles away as the crow flies and another 20 to the Newfoundland Mountains.
"They'll be close enough that they will be able to look back and see their old home," said Justin Dolling, northern region Division of Wildlife Resources biologist.
This project might be described as an insomniac's dream. The animals were loaded into secure nets and flown three at a time by helicopters pilots to a staging area near White Rock Bay, making it possible to literally count flying sheep.
The sheep were flown to the staging area, dangling high in the sky below the helicopter, and unloaded where biologists
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and volunteers brought them to a scale to be weighed. Then volunteers and biologists carried the animals to individual stations, consisting of several stacked bales of straw, and fitted the transplants with a radio collar and ear tags, gathered vital statistics and administered antibiotics.
The bighorns next moved to trailers for eventual release to their new homes, where they will augment existing herds that can be hunted or viewed by wildlife enthusiasts.
"There is no sedation used," said Steve Bates, the wildlife biologist for Antelope Island State Park. "They are handled as calmly and quickly as possible and then released. When we don't sedate them, they do much better."
The Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, a nonprofit hunting group that has raised millions to improve habitat for the sheep, provided much of the approximately $30,000 that will be spent moving the bighorns this week.
Dolling said bighorns were the dominant large wild mammal in northern Utah when Mormon pioneers arrived, but the combination of domestic sheep and heavy grazing meant a large reduction in sheep numbers.
But recent efforts to retire domestic grazing permits on public lands have brought the once rare bighorns back to the Great Basin in a big way. Dolling said that programs have become so successful that biologists are running out of places to move the sheep. "We need to find places to take some of these sheep," he said.
Those who want to watch the transplant process today or Friday can do so from a distance at the Buffalo Point overlook, an ideal place to view flying bighorn sheep.

Just an FYI on the last bolded portion, many of the permits have not been retired but instead converted from sheep to cattle. Permits were retired on the Newfoundland Mtns (but the area is not closed to grazing), but not on the Stansbury's. The Newfoundland's are a pretty cool, as they are a mountain range that is entirely surrounded by mud/salt flats. Approximately 1/2 of the range is Dept. of Defense land that is used for the training of bombing and has the majority of the permanent natural water sources.
I would guess there's very few people other than railroad workers that have been to this mountain range in the past few decades.

I just hope that someone comes up with some money to monitor the populations better in the future. Some of the past transplants were not monitored for many years due to lack of funds.

"I just hope that someone comes up with some money to monitor the populations better in the future. Some of the past transplants were not monitored for many years due to lack of funds."

How about volunteers? Lot's of volunteers for the capture and transplant, couldn't they do the monitoring as well?

Volunteers could work just fine. But, from the capture/transplant that I was apart of I doubt many of those guys are gonna be giving up any weekends to crawl around on a mountain to look for sheep. But, the DWR could ask them to help out or they could do their job and get a chopper or a plane for a couple of days and count sheep. Doesn't make sense to keep transplanting them if you're not gonna keep track of how the population is doing.

I do know they had a problem on the Stansbury's with a cat eating up a lot of sheep, which animal services removed. This was the first transplant that UT had tried without first going in and really hammering the predators prior to the reintro. Doesn't sound like that worked too well...