Whiskey Mountain Study

[BigHornRam]

I hope they get some answers.

A first-of-its-kind bighorn sheep study hopes to offer answers to an iconic Wyoming herd’s slow demise

Almost 2 million bighorn sheep once roamed the West’s mountains. They moved in waves so thick early explorers could hardly count their numbers. They provided endless food for Native Americans

trib.com

 

[Oak]

Ewes were captured in late winter as part of the project, and fitted with GPS collars and an internal transmitter. When an ewe gives birth, the transmitter pings her collar and lets Monteith’s graduate students – Rachel Smiley and Brittany Wagler – know where the lamb was born.

They then have less than two days to trek thousands of vertical feet through rugged Wind River country to find the lamb before it and the mother move on.

Processing lambs can take about 15 minutes, at which point it generally rejoins the mother and eventually heads onto summer range.

From there biologists wait to see if the lamb lives. As few as five lambs per 100 adults survive to adulthood in the Whiskey Mountain herd. Wildlife managers would like to see that at 30 lambs per 100.

“What’s happening on summer range, we don’t know, whether poor nutrition or pneumonia we don’t know,” said Greg Anderson, Game and Fish’s wildlife biologist in the Lander region.

It will be interesting to see the results of the lamb survival portion of the study. A similar study was completed on a herd in CO a few years ago. You can read the results here.

Here's another lamb survival study conducted at the Thorne-Williams Wildlife Research Center in Wyoming using ewes from a depopulated Colorado herd. These studies underscore the long-term effects bighorn sheep herds can suffer after a single exposure to respiratory pathogens that cause pneumonia.

 

[88man]

I hope they get some answers.

A first-of-its-kind bighorn sheep study hopes to offer answers to an iconic Wyoming herd’s slow demise

Almost 2 million bighorn sheep once roamed the West’s mountains. They moved in waves so thick early explorers could hardly count their numbers. They provided endless food for Native Americans

trib.com

I think they have been studying or trying to see if selenium deficiency is part of the issue with this herd.