Nevada Department of Wildlife NDOW just completes its largest Bighorn Sheep transplant in a single season since the first transplants back in 1968. The total number of bighorn sheep successfully transplanted statewide was 216. This included approximately 102 Desert Bighorn from various mountain ranges in Southern Nevada.

This year’s capture and transplant efforts were planned to meet several objectives.  Two of the main objectives were 1) reduce existing herd numbers and density in several mountain ranges that are approaching their bighorn carrying capacity and 2) continue to restore bighorn populations into unoccupied bighorn habitat or augment small resident herds where they inhabit a fraction of the available bighorn habitat.

A total of 44 collars were deployed across all the bighorn release areas, with most of them having a GPS receiver and half of them with real-time satellite transmission, allowing the game biologists to track their movements and survival every other day of the week for up to 2 years.

Several health profile and disease samples were taken from each animal at a base camp where the animals were processed prior to being loaded into a transport trailer.  Samples of animals were weighed to compare/contrast differences among mountain ranges that had the same original source stock.  Blood, swabs from the nose and throat, and feces were collected to allow for disease/pathogen testing, evaluate trace minerals that are important to their immune system and conduct DNA analyses to evaluate the amount of interaction herds have with one another.

As usual, Fraternity volunteers showed up in force to assist NDOW with handling and releasing sheep. Thanks to everyone that came out to help, I think everyone had a lot of fun and learned more about sheep in the process.

A huge thanks to all the incredible NDOW staff as well as the other agencies staff that assisted with this massive project and worked so hard. The state of Nevada is very fortunate to have such a tremendous team of dedicated professionals working for wildlife.