Sierra Bighorn
Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep exist today in five separate areas and are one of North America’s most endangered mammals. Although no one knows the exact number, as many as 1,000 Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep may once have inhabited their namesake mountains, from the central Sierra Nevada south to Mount Whitney and peaks further south, as well as in the Mineral King area to the west of the main crest of the range. Although field research documented a population decline from about 300 in the mid 1980s to about 115 a decade later in 1995, most Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep herds have grown over the last decade to a total of about 400. However, this positive development is tempered by evidence that population growth in numerous herds has slowed in recent years to a standstill or even small population declines.
Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep have long attracted the attention of those who ventured into their remote rocky realm and human interaction with these wild mountain sheep has been recorded for three centuries. Arrowheads and spear points, found where bighorn congregate, suggest that native people hunted mountain sheep. Hungry miners found “mountain sheep meat” listed as an entrée on the menu of a restaurant in the 19th Century mining camp of Bodie. The famous conservationist John Muir wrote with reverence about the bighorn as “the bravest of all the Sierra mountaineers,” although his journals describe seeing them only once. As these interactions suggest, conservation of Sierra bighorn has a history of its own.
Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep have held some form of protected status since the 1870s; yet, their populations continued to disappear past the middle of the 20th Century.. Intensive restoration efforts begun in the late 1970s were initially successful. Continuation of that effort, however, was hindered by legal constraints, predation, and behavioral changes among the bighorn themselves. After numbers dropped to a dangerously low level, in 1999 the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Foundation successfully petitioned the state of California to uplist them to endangered, and with 4 collaborating nonprofit foundations successfully petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide these sheep federal emergency endangered species status. Within a year, full federal and state endangered species protection was attained for these sheep.