Bighorn sheep were once a fairly common sight in West Texas. There are ancient petroglyphs across the region that show the animals and their trademark curly horns. But by the 1970s, the state was basically devoid of bighorns. Overhunting and disease from domestic animals forced them out of the state entirely.
In recent years, however, bighorns have made a comeback in Texas. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has carefully managed herds in state-owned natural areas, primarily around the Big Bend region. Now, they’re moving into new territory, by releasing bighorns in the Franklin Mountains outside El Paso.
Froylán Hernandez, the desert bighorn sheep program leader for TPWD, spoke to the Texas Standard about bighorns’ status in the state.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: So I understand that in October, the state plans to introduce bighorn sheep at Franklin Mountain State Park near El Paso. Where are these sheep going to come from?
Froylán Hernandez: We have a caption translocation scheduled for the first part of October of 2024. And the source is Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area, which is just 26 miles south of Alpine.
Tell us a little bit about what unique challenges the Franklin Mountains present when it comes to establishing a new herd of sheep.
Well, interesting that you ask anything unusual about the Franklin Mountains. The Franklin Mountains themselves are great bighorn habitat. You know, they have everything the bighorn need. They’ve got the browse plants that they eat, the topography; they’ve got springs there, and we’ve put supplemental water. So everything is perfect.
What makes them unique is that they are surrounded by city. And so that presents challenges in itself. So one of the things that we look for in a release site, in a potential release site or restoration site, is the ability for those animals to do natural expansion movements and recolonize new areas. The Franklins don’t have that.
And while that, I guess at first glance, might be something that is looked upon as a negative thing, we’re using that to our advantage. Because if sheep can’t move out, that also means other animals – and primarily animals that could be carrying diseases that are detrimental to bighorns – cannot move in.
» MORE: Protecting Texas’ bighorn sheep requires a hands-on approach
About how many bighorn sheep currently live in Texas? You have any idea?
Well, we do our surveys every year. And if you had asked this question just a couple of years back, I would have said we’ve got 1,500 animals for the state, which was the levels that we had back in the late 1800s. So we were sitting pretty.
However, we’ve ran into some very serious issues with disease, and that has knocked our population down to half of what they were just a couple years ago.
Wow. What sort of diseases are we talking about there?
One in particular that’s really detrimental to the bighorn populations, it’s a bacteria called mycoplasma ovipneumoniae. And we use M. ovi for short.
So that bacteria causes infectious pneumonia in bighorn. They transmit it to other animals. And 9 times out of 10, once they contract that bacteria, it’s deadly for the bighorns.
I know that in recent years, landowners in West Texas have put animals called aoudads on their property for hunting. These are similar to bighorns, but they’re originally from Africa.
There are concerns about their ability to outcompete bighorn sheep for resources. Do these exotic sheep make it harder for you to try to restore the native ones?
Absolutely. The bighorn populations are impacted by those aoudad, you know, just a competition for space, for resources, for water. We’ve done some research, and initial findings suggest that the aoudad, because they are bigger animal and they appear to be a little bit more aggressive, you know, they tend to displace the bighorns from prime habitat.
So we’ve got that competition side going on. But then more recently, a bigger threat that we’re facing is the threat of disease. We’ve sampled 13 mountain ranges in West Texas. And we were looking for that particular M. ovi, the mycoplasma ovipneumoniae bacteria. And every mountain range where we sampled aoudad, we found that bacteria.
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At some point, do you see bighorns all over West Texas? Where does this go in the future?
Our end goal is to make sure that bighorns thrive in their native habitat, which includes 15, 16 mountain ranges in far West Texas. Right now we’re sitting at about 10 to 11 different mountain ranges. So we still have quite a few mountain ranges that are unoccupied. So that would be our end goal.
However, you know, there’s lots of challenges to get there. And it’ll be years before we are able to achieve that goal.
You anticipated what I was going to ask next: How long you think this is going to take to reach that objective?
I could throw a number or a year out there and likely be wrong, but I suspect it’ll likely be at least 15, 20 years before we were able to achieve that goal – if we’re even able to achieve that goal.
And I say if carefully because, as I mentioned, aoudad occur in every mountain range in West Texas, and landowners, through hunting, you know, they make money off of them. So it’s an incentive for them to keep those animals. And I get that. I completely get that. And so it’s going to be very challenging to release bighorns there when you do have that disease transmission threat.
I will say, though, that we’re working towards, and through research, we’re looking at ways where we can identify, say, a level, if you will, a density level of aoudad that bighorns can tolerate, if that makes sense. And then this way we know it allows us to continue our restoration efforts. But it also gives the landowner that added supplement potential.
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