We're going to be attempting to capture and put the collar on some bighorn sheep ewes from the Rampart Range herd.

And those collars we're going to be putting out are going to be used to track those ewes for the next few years.

This is our dart system that we use.

It's called a New Dart which is just utilization of a tranquilizer dart gun.

We have about 150 sheep in the herd today.

Its grown exponentially in the last decade and so that's part of the reason why it has become a prime source herd for our translocation operations that we're doing trying to establish a new herd.

Its just about spending time and being patient because they, they will eventually show themselves.

It just might take a long time.

Our mandate is to manage these populations for the people of Colorado.

That means that we're trying to watch out for any issues that might cause decreases in sheep populations.

And then we're also looking for opportunities to increase the number of sheep on the landscape and the number of individual herds that we have, as well.

Bighorn sheep are an iconic species in the state of Colorado and a part of a healthy ecosystem.

Thats a big ram.

There are numerous challenges facing bighorn sheep in the state from increased recreation, loss of habitat.

But by and far, the greatest risk is these respiratory pathogens from domestic sheep.

It just takes one contact, one transmission of the pathogens that can cause disease to wipe a herd out.

And once bighorn sheep have been exposed, they can move that pathogen to other bighorn sheep.

And in some herds, we lose nearly every lamb, every year and so you have a stagnant to dwindling population of bighorn sheep.

A good example of a devastating die-off in Colorado was with the Trickle Mountain Herd.

Trickle Mountain Herd is right around Saguache at the north end of the San Luis Valley.

That herd historically had 400 or more animals.

In the early to mid 1990s, that herd suffered a catastrophic die-off and it went from 400 sheep to 35 sheep and Trickle Mountain Herd remained at 35 sheep until very recently, but it has taken nearly 30 years for that recovery to begin.

This video is a video that we took up on Pikes Peak this summer.

There were six lambs, I believe, in the group and every one of the six lambs were displaying symptoms of pneumonia.

You can hear the sound.

It's not easy to watch.

It's actually really, really sad to observe.

The odds of those lambs making it through the winter are very low.

Theres some really good research out there showing that when domestic sheep and bighorn sheep contact each other, the result often is that bighorn sheep die from pneumonia.

And so I think that's been shown enough times that there's some pretty good evidence that that happens.

The disease has been around for over 100 years and it does seem like introduction of domestic livestock to the landscape was a part of why those disease events happened.

There are a lot of really smart people who have been working on this for a really long time, and a good solution still hasn't come to the forefront.

I started work on bighorn sheep respiratory disease in 2009.

So this is our freezer archive and all of our samples that we'll be testing live in here.

This is animal 112790 who died in December of 2011.

And so what we'll do is we'll look at this tissue, we'll find out if there's bacterial DNA in here and if so, then we'll sequence that DNA to get a genetic fingerprint on it.

What Im trying to do is look for patterns in disease based on the bacterial genetics.

This project is a great project because it's a first look at something that we haven't tried before.

We can use this research to help predict outcomes in herds, so say we do have a disease event and we have dead animals, These are all my samples.

I can look at those samples and say, “Other herds that have had these kinds of bacteria in this kind of a disease event, this is what happened to them.” What scientists now believe is the primary pathogen that triggers respiratory disease in bighorn sheep is called Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae which came over with domestic sheep from the Old World.

When white settlers really started moving into Colorado in the late 1800s during the gold rush, there was a lot of market hunting that was happening.

In addition to that, there was livestock moving in to the state.

And so all of our large wildlife, you know, deer, elk, pronghorn, bison and bighorn sheep faced a lot of pressures from market hunting and subsistence hunting and, for bighorn sheep, impacts from disease from domestic sheep.

And we have reduced them to almost nothing left from what their historical populations were.

This is a map of Colorado and the large brown spots you see on this map are bighorn sheep range.

The smaller, little green polygons are active domestic sheep allotments managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

And the yellow spots are active domestic sheep allotments managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

So as you can see there are many areas where we have directly overlapping allotments with bighorn sheep habitat and those are the areas of primary concern for us.

One of the areas that we are focusing our efforts on to try to reduce conflict is in the San Juans West Herd.

It has numerous grazing allotments that overlap with the bighorn sheep range.

And these blue allotments here indicate the allotments that the Etchart family retired last year through their agreement with the National Wildlife Federation.

This will be the first year that we've remained on private land all summer long.

My brother and I run the ranch.

Right now, we carry 3,200 ewes, ewe-lamb pairs.

Its a good business.

You know, we raise good quality lamb, probably no better lamb in the country than these Colorado lambs and we've got a clip of wool that's you know, really sought after as well.

Grazing lands are important.

If you don't have enough grazing, of course you can't carry the sheep numbers that you need, so whether that be private land or federal lands that's always huge.

We'd been getting pressure from Bighorn Sheep Society for a number of years.

You know, they wanted us to be perfect out there and sometimes that's pretty tough to be perfect when you're dealing with animals that have a mind of their own.

This is a picture of three bighorn sheep that were observed on one of the Etchart family's allotments.

Ernie Etchart did the right thing and called Parks and Wildlife.

I think it's very commendable that he did because it wasn't necessarily in his best interest to do that.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife responded and they euthanized these three bighorns because of the risk of it returning to its herd with pathogens.

Initially, when we were first approached for the relinquishment of those allotments back to the federal land management agencies, they had so many issues with either conflicts with recreational use and bighorn sheep folks that really wanted us gone.

At that time, it was almost well, where are we going to go?

Over time, through the National Wildlife Federation, we were able to relinquish those allotments and with incentives that they provided for us we were able to turn to private land.

They were good permits.

It's sad.

It was, it was a hard decision.

We were able to make that change.

Not everybody's going to make that change.

You know, in fact, I would venture to say more than not would have to sell out.

It's just that hard to come up with private land grazing because that private land grazing not only has to compete with the other sheep people, but it has to compete with cattle grazers, too who are looking for it.

We were fortunate enough to fix it and not go out of business.

Some others might not be as fortunate.

So there are three bighorn sheep over on this side of the canyon and this side of the canyon was grazed with domestic sheep up until last year when that allottment was vacated.

We don't want to force people off of public lands and out of business.

We want to keep them in business if possible.

Our local officers and biologists try to maintain good relationships with the local landowners so that we can have those difficult conversations.

It is a challenge because we don't have a good treatment right now to treat the illness.

I would really like the federal agencies and Congress to come up with a solution for these permitees.

They largely bury their heads in the sand on it.

Everybody knows it's an issue.

We documented all-age mortality events in three herds with another herd being suspected of having an all-age mortality.

This is the worst report Ive had the misfortune of giving in the decade-plus that Ive been doing this.

There is not enough money with NGOs to fix all of these problems.

And while working with permittees to waive their permits back for compensation are appealing to the federal agencies because it gets them off the hook, we can't do it all.

We are literally out there raising every dollar.

We're working with people's livelihoods in a lot of situations.

It's certainly a challenge.

Right now we're working very hard, we have some of the best minds in wildlife veterinary medicine that are trying to come up with with ways to mitigate the issues and treat this disease.

I want to leave a legacy for not only my kids, but all the kids here in the state to make sure that there's healthy wildlife populations, not only for my children, but for others.