On Jan. 14, the Wyoming Game & Fish Commission approved a capture operation to remove up to 12 bighorn sheep from the Devil’s Canyon area east of Lovell. The sheep will be used to supplement the December 2009 release of 20 bighorn sheep from Oregon into the Seminoe Mountains of Wyoming.

A planned January release of 40 bighorns from Utah into the Seminoe Mountains was cancelled after Utah biologists documented significantly fewer sheep than previously thought available. With Utah bighorns no longer available, the department began to focus on the Devil’s Canyon area.

“We thought and the WGF Commission agreed that capturing and moving up to a dozen bighorns from the southern end of the Devil’s Canyon area would accomplish two important goals: maintaining separation between wild and domestic sheep in the Devil’s Canyon herd and providing additional animals to augment the Seminoe bighorn herd,” said department bighorn sheep coordinator Kevin Hurley.

According to Hurley a small group of bighorn sheep have established their home range too near an area seasonally used as a livestock driveway for domestic sheep.

“We do not want to risk potential contact between domestic and bighorn sheep because of possible disease transmission concerns,” Hurley said. “The state of Wyoming’s Domestic Sheep/Bighorn Sheep Interaction Working Group has worked hard over the past decade to maintain separation between wild and domestic sheep.”    

“Devil’s Canyon northeast of Lovell had a population between 50-60 bighorn sheep through the 1990s,” said Tom Easterly, Game & Fish wildlife biologist in Greybull. That small population was all that remained following a 1973 release of 39 bighorns from Whiskey Mountain near Dubois.

In November of 2004 and January of 2006, 60 bighorn sheep were transplanted to the Devil’s Canyon area to supplement the herd. Winter 2009-2010 population size is estimated at 160 bighorns with a population objective of 200, Easterly said.

 “Each of the adult bighorn sheep released in 2004 and 2006 were fitted with a radio tracking device that allowed biologists to track movements and collect other important information,” Easterly said.

Through monitoring, Easterly discovered that three ewes from the Montana transplant moved approximately four miles south to Cottonwood Canyon by summer 2006. A December of 2009 flight documented at least 11 bighorns south of Cottonwood Canyon, within three airline miles of Highway 14A, where two domestic sheep grazing permittees trail their stock to and from national forest grazing allotments.