{"id":97064,"date":"2018-11-20T16:32:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T23:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-officials-will-try-to-track-bighorn-sheep-in-weminuche\/"},"modified":"2018-11-20T16:32:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T23:32:00","slug":"wildlife-officials-will-try-to-track-bighorn-sheep-in-weminuche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-officials-will-try-to-track-bighorn-sheep-in-weminuche\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife officials will try to track bighorn sheep in Weminuche"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Parks and Wildlife hopes to capture and tag bighorn sheep in the Weminuche Wilderness to better understand the elusive animal\u2019s movements.<\/span>Courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Wildlife officials will take to the air this week to gain a better understanding of the bighorn sheep as part of a five-year study.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know a lot about how these bighorns use the landscape,\u201d Brad Weinmeister, a terrestrial biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife<\/a> in Durango, said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that this area provides good habitat, but we\u2019d like to get more information to help us with management plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wildlife officials through November and early December will use a helicopter in the hopes of locating the elusive animal and then fit them with GPS collars to follow their daily movements.<\/p>\n

Colorado Parks and Wildlife said in a prepared statement that tracking the animals will allow wildlife officials to determine what areas of the Weminuche Wilderness bighorns use.<\/p>\n

And, crews may swab nasal tissue and take blood samples to help determine if the bighorns have been exposed to diseases, the news release said.<\/p>\n

The aim is to capture and tag up to 17 animals. Six bighorns were tagged with GPS collars in March 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Colorado Parks and Wildlife estimates there are 405 bighorns in the Weminuche Wilderness, between Vallecito Creek and Wolf Creek Pass.<\/p>\n

These herds have been wrapped up in controversy for more than two years.<\/p>\n

In February 2016, the U.S. Forest Service released a proposed decision<\/a> to continue domestic sheep grazing in the Weminuche Wilderness, despite concerns that domestic sheep can spread disease to wild bighorn herds.<\/p>\n

The proposed determination elicited heated public comments both for and against the continuation of grazing in the Weminuche Wilderness<\/a>, Colorado\u2019s largest wilderness area.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Jonina Vanderbilt, spokeswoman for the Forest Service, said the agency has not yet made a final decision on the matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision was delayed in part to collect additional information on bighorn sheep movement to better understand the likelihood of interaction between bighorn sheep and domestic sheep,\u201d she wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

Vanderbilt wrote that any timeframe for a final decision is based upon Colorado Parks and Wildlife\u2019s research.<\/p>\n

\u201cUncertain impacts from potential domestic sheep disease transmission to bighorn sheep populations necessitate further study of the issues,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

In the 760-square-mile Weminuche Wilderness, the Forest Service proposed the continued use of six active grazing allotments, which total nearly 50,000 acres for about 5,600 permitted sheep.<\/p>\n

Those sheep belong to local rancher J. Paul Brown, who has said in previous interviews the use of public lands for his livestock is critical to keeping his business alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cKicking us off our allotments would be the end of our ranching operation,\u201d Brown said previously. \u201cAnd it would be the end of the dream of our sons and grandchildren to continue the Brown family ranching business.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at the core of the issue are the survival of wild bighorns, which are highly susceptible to diseases transmitted from domestic sheep if the two come in contact, said Dan Parkinson, an advocate with Backcountry Hunters and Anglers<\/a> who is helping a citizen scientist effort to monitor bighorn and domestic sheep movements<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need separation or it\u2019s a matter of time until we see a (bighorn) herd die-off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 2016, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2010 Payette National Forest Service decision to phase out 70 percent of active sheep grazing permits because of concerns over disease transmission.<\/p>\n

Vanderbilt wrote, \u201cThe Payette court case does not affect other National Forests because it was only regarding the Payette National Forest\u2019s Land and Resource Management Plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is CPW protocol to kill any bighorn sheep known to come into contact with domestic sheep, so the animal doesn\u2019t bring disease back to its herd.<\/p>\n

In 2016, six bighorn were killed<\/a>. CPW reported that no bighorns were killed in 2017 and 2018 as a result of coming in contact with domestic sheep.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officials to use a helicopter to find and fit animals with GPS collars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1030,738,549,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-environment","tag-environmental-issue","tag-united-states-forest-service","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97064"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}