Bighorn Sheep Need New Homes

Repeatedly stifled in efforts to transplant bighorn sheep in new locations in Montana over the past few years, the state’s wildlife commission chairman said it may be time to rethink the state’s conservation strategy for the popular big game species.

“I guess what I’m hearing is we don’t have any place in Montana to place sheep,” said Dan Vermillion, Fish and Wildlife Commission chairman, at the group’s last meeting.

“Not with the criteria we’ve established,” said John Vore, FWP’s game management bureau chief. “Much of our historic sheep habitat didn’t have domestic sheep.”

Vore said recently that he’s preparing a presentation for the commission that outlines the criteria for where sheep can be established and places that the department has already looked at that don’t meet those guidelines.

“We keep looking at areas, and we’ve looked at many, many,” he said.

Under the state’s conservation plan – adopted in 2010 – FWP set a goal of creating five new huntable populations of bighorn sheep in the state by 2022. Yet time and again the department’s attempts to transplant wild sheep have been thwarted.

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