The Wild Sheep Foundation has released a new publication focused on keeping wild sheep populations healthy and thriving.
“Thankfully, a lot of people are interested in wild sheep, and not just sportsmen and sportswomen hoping to draw a tag someday,” said Gray N. Thornton, President and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation. “Just seeing wild sheep on the mountain is a comforting sign we’re doing right by this iconic species, but we can and need to do better. We’re losing far too many to disease.”
Keeping Wild Sheep Healthy is a free educational brochure that delivers the science and presents various strategies for keeping wild sheep from contracting a deadly disease from animal-to-animal contact with domestic sheep, goats, and even infected wild sheep.
Domestic sheep and goats can carry the respiratory pathogen Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (Movi). This pathogen can easily be transmitted if wild sheep come in contact with domestic sheep. Once a wild sheep is infected, it compromises its immune system, making it susceptible to another respiratory disease like pneumonia, which weakens and often kills the animal.
“Being social herd animals, once a wild sheep is infected, the disease can quickly spread to an entire herd,” Thornton explained. “Once this happens, the hardest hit are the spring lambs. We’ve seen a healthy crop of spring lambs in a population, and within four months, there are none left. That’s not sustainable and unacceptable in my book. Like any challenge to overcome, it starts with education on the problem and then identifying the solutions available to address the problem.”
The new brochure is timely. New evidence indicates that aoudad (Barbary sheep), an introduced species to North America from North Africa, can also carry Movi. Today, their ranges include Texas, New Mexico, California, Oklahoma, and central Oregon—all ranges that are also occupied by native desert bighorn or Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.
Click here for more information and to download a digital copy of Keeping Wild Sheep Healthy.
The Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF), based in Bozeman, Mont., was founded in 1977 by sportsmen and other wild sheep conservationists. WSF is the premier advocate for wild sheep, having raised and expended more than $145 million, positively impacting these species through population and habitat enhancements, research and education, and conservation advocacy programs in North America, Europe, and Asia to “Put and Keep Wild Sheep On the Mountain”®. In North America, these and other efforts have increased bighorn sheep populations from historic lows in the 1950s-60s of 25,000 to more than 85,000 today. WSF has a membership of more than 11,000 worldwide. www.wildsheepfoundation.org.
