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.
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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.