31-01-2025
Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists face blizzard during state animal restoration project
DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists are braving a blizzard to continue work on their bighorn sheep project, the organization posted on X.
Commonly referred to as rams, although females are called ewes, the curly-horned ovis has become a legendary animal in the United States and had such an influence in Colorado, that the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep was named the state animal in 1961.
Millions of bighorn sheep used to scale the cliffs in North America at the beginning of the 19th century but that number plummeted to only 20,000 in 1940 and current numbers only hover around 70,000, according to Defenders of Wildlife.
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There are many factors that influenced the decline of the bighorn sheep population, according to Defenders of Wildlife, some of those include:
Competition with domestic livestock for foraging
Loss of water sources from human diversion or livestock use
Mining operations
Vehicle collisions on highways
Military bombing on training ranges
Introduction of livestock that spread disease
Overhunting
Climate change
Habitat loss
To help restore the population of the bighorn sheep in Colorado, CPW has been relocating bighorn sheep to create a new herd in the state.
CPW biologist, Ty Woodward, is leading a team that is using a baiting system to trap and relocate the bighorn sheep. Every morning the team sets up alfalfa and apple pulp to train the bighorn sheep to return to the location of the food. Eventually, a net trap will be used to capture and relocate the bighorn sheep.
CPW said this is an effort to restore the bighorn sheep which are the state animal, as well as the symbol for the CPW organization itself.
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