Bighorn transplant delights wildlife workers
RENA DELBRIDGE Star-Tribune correspondent | Posted: Thursday, February 1, 2007 12:00 am
ROCK RIVER - Hesitant at first to leave the confines of their home for the previous 30 hours, more than 40 bighorn sheep followed the few with initiative, dashing from three livestock trailers into the rugged, rocky slopes of the Laramie Mountains.
Binding together quickly into the safety of a herd, the animals tore off up bouldered hillsides and over the nearest ridge, moving almost as one in a fluid stream.
Watching the bighorns take to their new home brought smiles mingled with a sense of wonderment to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department staffers who made it happen - and to the 20 or so onlookers under a crystalline winter sky Wednesday morning.
"They know what kind of country they like," said Bob Lanka, Game and Fish wildlife management coordinator for the Laramie Range.
More than six months in the making, the transplant from northwest Montana came together under a take-your-breath-away Wyoming morning, a dusting of fresh snow on the ground and not even a murmur of wind.
"It's probably a once-in-a-career type thing for us," Martin Hicks said with a grin. A Game and Fish biologist in Wheatland, he took the lead in arranging the transplant.
"I'd do it again in a heartbeat," agreed Bart Morris, a former Game and Fish employee who moved to Montana. He volunteered his time - and an extra truck and trailer - for the chance to be part of the transplant.
Bighorn sheep once roamed southeast Wyoming in large numbers. Emigrants rolling west along the Oregon Trail noted them, and canyons around Glendo once were home to the wild animals, Lanka said. Settlement drove herds higher into the Laramie Range, and the bighorn sheep population was essentially decimated around 1900.
The majestic animals were brought back in 1969, culled from the Whiskey Basin herd near Dubois. Six subsequent transplants increased numbers to nearly 200, but ended in 1989.
But numbers of new ewes began tapering off in recent years, possibly due to the drought, Hicks said. Clearly, Game and Fish needed to bring new blood into the mix, and ideally add to the 200 or so sheep in the area. The target population is 500, Hicks said.
In 2002, the Hensel Fire opened new sheep corridors around Laramie Peak, clearing out dense timber stands that gave predators a leg up on migrating sheep. With that habitat boost and the need to bolster the herd's stagnant numbers with fresh genes, Game and Fish biologists arranged the transfer.
Capture
Hicks and four others left Saturday for Missoula, Mont., where they helped round up the sheep for transplant. Pilots maneuver helicopters so a "shooter" in the back can discharge a net gun over a sheep. The wild animal is caught unaware as a "mugger" leaps from the chopper and eases the animal to the ground, where the sheep are hobbled and blindfolded.
Typically, one net results in one sheep - maybe two if the crews are lucky, game warden Craig Smith added. Once captured, the sheep were flown inside or from an attached net to Hicks and his crew.
In all, crews captured 33 ewes, five yearling rams, three lamb rams and an ewe lamb for transplant. Most of the ewes are pregnant and should deliver in late May or early June, Smith said.
Easing the animals off the helicopters, the Game and Fish staffers fed each one through a five- to 10-minute veterinary exam. Vets took DNA samples, checked for wounds, determined sex and age, recorded measurements and fitted 30 sheep with GPS radio collars.
Those collars feed positioning data to the department via satellite. After two lambing seasons, biologists will deactivate the collars using a special remote mechanism that triggers automatic release. Data is stored on the collar and can be analyzed to identify choices of lambing habitat, where the sheep winter and favored migration paths, Lanka said. Based on that information, biologists can recommend changes to management area boundaries or practices.
After the quick check-up and collar fitting, sheep were scuttled quickly into the trailers, where the hobbles and blindfolds came off.
"When they first get up and see where they're at, they get a little wild," Smith said. He was assigned the task of taking off the blindfolds and hobbles in the trailers, where things did get a little Western at times, he said.
Thanks to fully enclosed trailers, no sedatives were needed. In each of the three trailers, Game and Fish placed a bale or two of hay for food or as bedding, ice blocks for liquid nourishment and a rubber mat scattered with wood chips for comfort.
New home
Pulling at least a 30-hour shift, the Game and Fish crews hauled the three trailers 18 hours through snowstorms to the release site tucked beneath Split Rock and Reese Mountains on the western slope of the Laramie Range. The day before, Game and Fish crews battled up the mountain with heavy equipment to carve out a path. Dooley Oil Co. of Laramie donated the fuel supply and heavy equipment for that part of the endeavor, in honor of the owner's late father, who served as a Game and Fish commissioner, Lanka said.
The terrain is ripe for more of the animals, with an abundance of steep, rocky outcrops that protect ewes from predators while lambing. High meadows offer nutrient-rich forbs for the little lambs to grow strong and for ewes to replenish their stores in preparation for a harsh, windy winter.
"It's a pretty delicate balancing act," Lanka said. "They really need that good forage in the summertime. There's no room for error, that's for sure. It's living on the edge, but they've done it for hundreds and hundreds of years."
Late each fall, the sheep trickle down to the lower slopes seeking easy forage where the wind sweeps hillsides clear of snow, Lanka explained.
Taking advantage of the prime bighorn habitat, Game and Fish created the Laramie Peak sheep management area about 35 miles west of Wheatland, offering greater protection for the animals and their turf while giving sportsmen a special opportunity to harvest a few trophies as populations permit. About four tags each year are issued for the management area, part of Area 19. Hicks speculated that, given a few years to establish the new transplants, more tags could become available.
Evelyn Kennedy, who ranches with her husband Jerry near the transplant site, said the sheep are often spotted but usually from afar - with one notable exception. For several years when the Kennedys brought cattle down to winter pasture, a solitary ewe tailed along and hung out with the domestic livestock for the season.
She and Jerry turned out nearly 30 years ago for the first transplant, too. Bighorn sheep make decent ranch neighbors, she said, as long as the populations are kept in check. Jerry is also an outfitter, so the relationship is symbiotic.
"As long as we keep a balance, it's fine," Evelyn said.
Each transplanted animal carries a price tag of about $3,000. Funding for this effort came from the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep's national organization, its eastern group and chapters in Wyoming, Iowa and Wisconsin/Minnesota, and from the Wyoming Governor's Big Game License Coalition. Lanka noted that even if an organization provides funding, that money really comes from sportsmen who buy raffle tickets, pay membership dues and attend banquets and other fundraisers.