March 11, 2017
JEMEZ POST
They’re back to where they belong. More Bighorn sheep have just been shipped to the Jemez Mountains by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. The latest group, 34 strays from the Wheeler Peak herd, has joined a herd of 45 or so in the Cochiti Canyon area that were released there in the Fall of 2014.
This used to be their ground, but overhunting, livestock competition, diseases and habitat alteration have led to the extinction of a variety of species, including the Bighorns, by about 1900. Now they have been turned loose in the Santa Fe National Forest in Cochiti Canyon, the site of the 2011 Las Conchas fire.
That massive wildfire reduced a thickly overgrown area of pine forest to steep open country, ideal country for Bighorns that is showing abundant grass growth and provides spaces that allow the sheep to avoid predators. They are expected to disperse over their release area, possibly spreading as far as Bandelier and parts of Cochiti Pueblo.
Thanks to the JEMEZ POST