KUIU teamed up with the Utah Wild Sheep Foundation for a bighorn sheep transplant project around Morenci, Arizona. Sheep have been coming down the town and near the roadways, leading to hundreds of sheep fatalities from vehicle collisions. We talked with Steve Najar, a wildlife biologist from Morenci, who told us he loaded 343 bighorn rams into the back of his state truck. “It’s such an awful waste of resources to lose that many sheep to vehicle collisions.” Just in Arizona alone, they have created three new areas for the bighorn sheep that are now huntable. Steve said it was so great to have some of these sheep moved to Utah so we could start a few more herds.
We had a team of amazing volunteers helping us drive around town darting as many bighorn sheep as they could and assisting in helicopter capture. It took two days for the team to move the 28 Bighorn Sheep captured in the town of Morenci. Next, the group moved all 28 sheep to Antelope Island, Utah. Antelope Island has been a nursery for bighorn sheep since 1997, and we are proud that it can still be a nursery for bighorn sheep today. The team had to test all 28 bighorns before placing them on Antelope Island to ensure they were all disease-free. This capture in Arizona added to the approximately 50 bighorns residing on Antelope Island, bringing the total population to near 80.
TJ Sanchez, a direct conservation contributor, and a Utah hunter, said of the bighorn sheep transplant project, “There’s not a lot of people that get to do this hands-on stuff, so for me as a hunter and not necessarily a sheep hunter, just a guy that likes to see conservation in action, it’s just amazing.”
Jason Radokovich, who assisted in the relocation efforts, said he enjoys “Being able to lay your hands on a ram, a living ram, and know you’re going to be doing something good with it, whether it’s increasing the population in another state or getting them out of an area like Morenci where they live in town and there have been a lot of casualties.”
This is the first Rocky Mountain Bighorn Herd in the West. All of the bighorns in Utah now are all transplants that started in the 80s. Utah Wild Sheep Foundation has helped grow the wild sheep populations in Utah from less than 500 animals in the late 70s to almost 5500 animals, and it’s entirely based on transplant work.
This is the start, the tip of the iceberg, to working with wild sheep and their habitat, to grow their herds and see them thrive. KUIU Conservation Direct funded the entire Arizona leg of this project, with the Utah side taken care of by the Utah Wild Sheep Foundation and SFW. Thank you to everyone who has helped us on this journey and helped keep and put sheep on Utah’s mountains.