Bighorn Sheep Texas from Elephant Mountain to Franklin Mountains

[Beringia]

The desert bighorn sheep is a Texas native. In recent decades it has struggled to retain a foothold among the mountain ranges of West Texas. It wasn't always this way. Bighorn sheep once numbered more than 2,500 in the Lone Star State. As the railroad blazed its way further into the desert, it brought threats such as unregulated hunting and domesticated sheep carrying transferrable diseases. Hunting bighorn was banned by the Texas Legislature in 1903, but in spite of this and other efforts to establish conservation areas for the sheep, their numbers continued to decline. In 1958, the last known native desert bighorn was spotted north of Van Horn. By the 1960s, the sheep had been eradicated from the Lone Star State.

In the latter half of the 20th century, TPWD and the Texas Bighorn Society began a captive breeding program and have slowly made inroads to reintroducing the sheep to the mountain ranges of West Texas. The current tally of bighorns is less than 1,000 across several Texas mountain ranges.

Elephant Mountain has served as the source population for reintroductions to several Texas ranges. With the average lifespan of a wild desert bighorn ranging from 10 to 20 years, several generations of sheep have passed since their ancestors, 10 rams and 10 ewes, were first brought to Elephant Mountain on February 4, 1987. Those initial pioneers have increased their population tenfold in the past three decades, bringing the population to its latest count of 212.

But reintroduction has proven to be an uphill battle. Most Texas herds of desert bighorns carry the bacteria Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, M. ovi for short, which causes a deadly pneumonia in the bighorn population. Exacerbating the problem is the presence of aoudad, also known as Barbary sheep, an introduced species from Africa that greatly outnumbers bighorn sheep, with a Texas population estimate upwards of 20,000. Aoudad have proven to be vectors for M. ovi and are in close contact with bighorns in the steep terrain of West Texas. Bighorn populations have suffered several disease events in the last few years, reducing their numbers.

Elephant Mountain is an exception as the only so-called “clean herd” in Texas, meaning that there is no trace of M. ovi. That's no accident. Thus far, TPWD staff have kept aoudad off the wildlife management area with a combination of 13 game cameras stationed across the property to watch for aoudad intruders and biweekly aerial gunning. Keeping the aoudads at bay is most likely an unsustainable practice.

https://tpwmagazine.com/nature/bighorn




Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (Movi) is a bacterium that causes respiratory disease in sheep and goats. It can also affect wild ruminants, such as bighorn sheep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_ovipneumoniae

My Poem Ram Tough

https://www.angelfire.com/dragon2/leavesandtrees/poems/ramtough.html

[StarryNite]

1. So beautiful seeing them running free into their new home.