APRIL 2017 • NEBRASKAland 73
VIT that is in that particular sheep. We will be
prepared with equipment to go in and collar
those lambs. Then, we'll follow them for the next
two or three months to identify cause-specific
mortality."
The monitoring will require checks nearly
every day, and the Commission will be looking
to volunteers, such as college students studying to
be wildlife managers, to lessen the burden of its
staff. Nordeen said it is almost imperative to find
the lambs less than a day after birth and death. Any
later than that after birth and catching the lambs becomes
much more difficult. The longer one waits after death the
more chance predators and scavengers will capitalize on
their find.
The capturing project was funded largely by conservation
organizations, including the Nebraska Big Game Society,
Wild Sheep Foundation and the Iowa Chapter of the
Foundation for North American Sheep.
Nebraska now has a population of about 320 bighorns, 140
of which are in the Pine Ridge.
The Audubon's subspecies of bighorn sheep was native
to the butte country of the Nebraska Panhandle but was
extirpated from the state because of disease, unregulated
hunting and habitat loss in the early 1900s. The subspecies
became extinct in 1925.
Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep from Custer State Park in
South Dakota were reintroduced to Nebraska in an enclosure
at Fort Robinson State Park in 1981. Those sheep were
released to the wild in 1988 and 1993 and additional release
efforts of sheep from Montana, Canada and Colorado in
2001, 2005, 2007 and 2012 have resulted in herds that
reside in areas of the Pine Ridge between Harrison and
Chadron, and the Wildcat Hills south of Gering and east to
McGrew. ■
A ewe is released following processing. Handling the wild sheep are, from left, Justin Powell, Brandon Tritsch, Greg Schenbeck and
Adam Bahl.
The helicopter delivers a ewe for processing at Fort Robinson
State Park.
