When Sheep Fly
Captured bighorn are dropped off outside Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area headquarters. (Photo by Kamila Forson)
Biologists affix a tracking collar to a blindfolded bighorn. (Photo by Kamila Forson)
Volunteers carry a blindfolded bighorn away from the helicopter. (Photo by Kamila Forson)
By Megan Wilde
As the helicopter crests Elephant Mountain, a small army of biologists, veterinarians, and volunteers rushes over to meet it. It’s a few days before Christmas, and the sun has just risen on this group outside Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area’s headquarters south of Alpine. All eyes are directed at three figures swaddled in neon orange and swaying gently on a rope that hangs from the approaching chopper. Poking out of each orange bundle is the head of a blindfolded sheep. Why are sheep flying in such style?
These aren’t just any sheep. They’re desert bighorn, who have just been captured for the latest phase of a major wildlife-restoration project.
About 1,500 desert bighorn sheep probably roamed the Trans-Pecos in the late 1800s. But overhunting, combined with diseases spread by domestic and exotic livestock, took a massive toll on Texas’ bighorn population. By the 1960s, they had disappeared.
Efforts to reestablish bighorn here began in the 1950s. Now, more than a thousand sheep call West Texas’ rugged mountains home, thanks to work by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, hunting and conservation groups, and private landowners.
The herd at Elephant Mountain has done particularly well. Started in 1987, it has grown from 20 to around 160 sheep. That’s more than the wildlife management area can sustain though, and is one reason for today’s airlift, explains Froylan Hernandez, a biologist who now runs the state wildlife department’s bighorn program.
Hernandez: Exactly, there’s too many sheep here, so we’re moving sheep from the habitat to keep it intact, to keep it from degrading. And we’re placing it in ranges that don’t have sheep currently.
The sheep caught during this two-day operation at Elephant Mountain will be loaded onto trailers and taken to the Bofecillos Mountains in Big Bend Ranch State Park—the first sheep release at a state park. Biologists hope that these 46 bighorn will eventually become part of a larger regional population, which will rove between the area’s mountain ranges.
That means monitoring the sheep’s movement from the release site will be important, as is making sure they’re healthy.
So, as soon as the sheep are unloaded from the helicopter, they’re carried to nearby teams of biologists, veterinarians and volunteers. These crews act with emergency-room swiftness—drawing blood samples, swabbing ears and anuses to test for parasites, and fitting the sheep with radio collars that will help track their movements once they reach their new home. All in less than five minutes.
Meanwhile, the sheep’s temperature is monitored, to make sure they’re not getting overly stressed. Whenever a sheep starts getting too hot, it’s immediately sprayed with water to cool it down. Not surprisingly, it’s nerve-wracking for these animals to be chased by a helicopter, then netted, bagged, flown, and handled by humans. So, many precautions are taken to ensure there’s no additional stress.
The blindfolds also ease stress, and make these wild animals more manageable, explains Ruben Cantu, a regional director with the wildlife department.
Cantu: Blindfolds do keep them calm. They don’t know what’s going on around them. They can’t see. If they did, they’d get really agitated and boogery. So we keep the blindfolds on them until we get to the trailer door, and the blindfolds come off when they’re put in the trailer.
Once in the trailers, the sheep will be hauled to the state park release site near the Rio Grande. The trailer gates will open, and the sheep will be on their own, the biologist Hernandez says.
Hernandez: It’ll take them a couple days to kind of settle down. But hopefully they’ll go straight into the mountains and feel right at home.
Have a question or comment about this episode? Contact Nature Notes Coordinator Megan Wilde at mwilde [at] cdri [dot] org. Or discuss this episode on Nature Notes’ Facebook page. This episode originally aired on January 13, 2011.
References & Resources for Educators
- Texas Parks and Wildlife Department: Bighorn sheep release at Big Bend Ranch
- Texas Bighorn Society
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Nature Notes is sponsored by the Meadows Foundation and the Dixon Water Foundation and is produced in cooperation with Marfa Public Radio.
