http://www.trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_57d1d8ae-1ff0-5fd0-a52d-c9a2874c7732.html
SINCLAIR -- First out of the trailer when the gate dropped Wednesday morning were three fast-moving ewes from Oregon.

It took only seconds for the trio of bighorn sheep to make a mad dash up and over the rugged, snow-capped ridge in the Ferris/Seminoe area north of Rawlins.

A dozen or so more bighorns followed seconds later, one suddenly veering left and almost colliding with a small crowd of startled onlookers before heading over the ridge with the others.

Last to check out their new digs in Wyoming were three young rams.

They too quickly scampered over the snowy ridge located near Morgan Creek deep in the Seminoe Mountains and not too far from the Seminoe Dam, heading toward their chosen-for-them home in the rugged terrain of one of Wyoming’s smaller mountain ranges.

The 20 bighorn sheep were transplanted from a herd in Oregon. Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials expect the animals will help rejuvenate a beleaguered sheep herd that used to number in the hundreds.

"This is cool stuff ... this is why a lot of us in the Game and Fish got into this business," said an obviously excited agency wildlife biologist, Bob Lanka, minutes after the release. "This is really putting sheep on the mountain."

The Ferris/Seminoe bighorn sheep herd unit received the first of two boosts with the release. The sheep transplant is part of a larger effort to augment the dwindling herd with 60 additional sheep from out-of-state herds. Game and Fish officials said 40 more sheep will be released into the herd unit in January.

The five rams and 15 ewes were captured Tuesday in Oregon and trucked overnight to Wyoming.

Agency officials said GPS-radio collars were placed on 13 of the bighorns to allow biologists to track their movements and habitat use.

For 50 years, Game and Fish has been exporting bighorn sheep from the state’s Whiskey Basin herds near Dubois for transplant into declining herds in other Rocky Mountain states.

Agency biologists said Wednesday’s release marked the sixth time in state history that out-of-state bighorns have been released into the wilds of Wyoming.

The bighorns were released at a remote site located near Morgan Creek, about 30 miles north of Sinclair in Carbon County. It’s within the Morgan Creek Wildlife Habitat Management Area.

Previous releases

Game and Fish bighorn sheep coordinator Kevin Hurley said previous attempts to supplement the Ferris/Seminoe herd with sheep from Whiskey Basin above Dubois were not as successful as hoped.

Between 1957 and 1985, a total of 236 bighorns from the Whiskey Basin area were brought to Ferris/Seminoe in six releases.

In the 24 years since the last release, agency biologists believe the herd count has dwindled to 20.

Biologists suspect one reason for the decline is that the Whiskey Basin sheep were adapted to different ecological conditions than those found in the Seminoe Mountains, specifically high-alpine habitat, seasonal migration and late lambing chronology.

Hurley said the differences may have contributed to poor lamb survival and limited population performance of the herd in the past.

He said the agency is taking a different approach with this transplant effort.

The sheep obtained for this release were captured from the Diablo Mountains in south-central Oregon, which has ecological conditions similar to the Seminoe Mountains.

Hurley said the Oregon bighorns are non-migratory animals that are adapted to low-elevation habitat and should be a much closer biological and behavioral matches to habitats in the Seminoe Range.

"We think we’ve got the right kind of sheep for this spot, and we think this will work out really well," Hurley said.

Utah, Oregon sheep

In August, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission approved the supplemental release of up to 60 bighorn sheep into the unit. Oregon and Utah agreed to provide animals for the release.

Rawlins wildlife biologist Greg Hiatt was among the small Game and Fish team that went to Oregon for the capture operations. He said the source sheep were captured using a contracted helicopter net-gun crew and the help of Oregon wildlife officials.

During the operation, "muggers" hung out of the chopper and used a special, shoulder-fired launcher to propel a net at each desired bighorn.

The nets entangled the sheep, enabling them to be captured and then transported to a centralized processing and loading area.

Following capture, the bighorns were collared, ear-tagged, treated for parasites, sampled for various blood and body conditions, and then loaded into two modified horse trailers for transport to Wyoming.

"This unit hasn’t been grazed for about 40 years, so we think production has been pretty good at this spot, which should increase their chances for survival," Hiatt said. "They actually should have a lot more forage than they had back at home."

The department will work with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to capture 10 rams and 30 ewes from Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. Half of those sheep will be radio-collared before release.

Agency officials said they expect the two-part supplemental release will cost about $115,000, most of which has already been funded.

Lanka said several funding partners contributed to the project, including the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, the Wyoming Chapter of the Foundation for North American Wildlife Sheep, the Minnesota-Wisconsin Chapter of FNAWS, the Eastern FNAWS and the Wild Sheep Foundation.

The agency was also assisted by the Bureau of Land Management’s Rawlins Field Office, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, APHIS/Wildlife Services and area landowners.

Contact southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino at 307-875-5359 or gearino@tribcsp.com

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