Bighorn Sheep

14 Bighorn Released, Dark Skies in Oracle State Park

Posted - Charles Miles
Jack Hanna helps release 14 bighorns into Catalinas – Douglas Kreutz – Arizona Daily Star, Fourteen bighorn captured for release into Santa Catalinas Thursday – JD Wallace – Tucson News Now, Bighorn Sheep Release in Santa Catalinas Closed to Public – Maria Inés Taracena – Arizona Public Media: On Thursday AM – in a release closed to the public – 14 additional Bighorn Sheep (11 ewes and 3 rams) were released into the Santa Catalina Mountains. The release took place in a residential area that offers access into the areas on Pusch Ridge that the Bighorn remaining from the first release have been using. The release was closed because of “public safety concerns and animal welfare concerns”… Best of luck to the new Bighorn Sheep! (The Friends of Santa Catalina Bighorn Sheep Facebook Page is currently a good resource for capture and release videos and pictures.) Oracle State Park gains international dark sky status – Yoohyun Jung – Arizona Daily Star: Oracle State Park is the first state park in Arizona to be recognized as an international dark sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association, – the park received Silver Status which means that there are “minor impacts from light pollution and other artificial light disturbance”. The park is normally limited to day use – look for Stargazing and Dark Sky Celebration events in January and March on the Friends of Oracle State Park and Oracle State Park websites. The Bighorn Sheep Restoration Project Status update for 10/27 to 11/12 is now available (all updates are currently available here). The most interesting part of this status update is a small change to the reporting on the lambs where the document simply says “No lambs were observed during this reporting period” – I believe some previous status updates may have simply reported the number of lambs previously observed when there was no reason to suspect any moralities.

Bighorn Death, Fuelwood, Private Shrines

Posted - Charles Miles

Bighorn sheep found dead in Coronado Forest, cause of death still unknown – Anthony Victor Reyes, KVOA.com, Another bighorn sheep death reported by AZ Game and Fish – Ina Ronquillo, KGUN9, Game and Fish reports 19th bighorn sheep death – John Ames, Tucson News Now: The first Bighorn death for months – the cause is not yet known but an attack by a predator has been ruled out.

Fuelwood permits available for portions of Mt. Lemmon – Coronado National Forest: “Fuelwood permits for portions of Mt. Lemmon, located on the Santa Catalina Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest, will be available for sale November 3 to December 15, 2014 at the Ranger District Office, 5700 N. Sabino Canyon Road in Tucson.” – more details in the press release.

More private shrines appearing on S. Arizona forest lands – Douglas Kreutz, Arizona Daily Star: An article about shrines on public lands including a picture of a private shrine just below the Babad Do’ag vista. While it may be an emotional issue the heart of the article is probably this quote from Heidi Schewel – Coronado National Forest Communications Staff Officer – “From a regulatory standpoint such personal memorials would be considered abandonment of personal property, which is prohibited,”

Catalina Bighorn Sheep Advisory Committee – Meeting Notes, Public Records Request

Posted - Charles Miles

The Friends of Wild Animals have been a vocal opponent of the Bighorn Sheep Reintroduction Project – whether or not you agree with their views they seem to have done the interested public a service with a recent Public Records Request. In response to their request the Arizona Game and Fish Department has produced documents including meeting notes for the Santa Catalina Bighorn Sheep Reintroduction Advisory Committee.

These notes are fascinating because the Advisory Committee meetings are closed to the public. There have been quite a few details released about the reintroduction project – but this is the first time (that I am aware of) – that any meaningful details about these meetings have been released. The Friends of Wild Animals have posted their conclusions about the the notes in Bighorn Sheep Committee notes reveal pattern of secrecy and deception (covered by Sonu Wasu of Tucson News Now in Watchdog group blasts Bighorn Sheep advisory board members for ‘secrecy’).

In addition to posting their own opinions on the documents the Friends of Wild Animals have posted a pdf of the notes (they note: “We have put the scattered documents into chronological order and rescanned them. To obtain the original files, please email [email protected].”).

With public lands, wildlife, Wilderness and the AZGF involved in this project it is disappointing that these meetings were not open to the public. These notes – where the members appear to struggle with the details of habitat and fire, Mountain Lions, how to measure success, environmental regulations and details about GPS collar transmissions are actually refreshing reading – surely I am not the only one who finds projects that operate behind closed doors, work to present only a carefully crafted media message, stick to ‘talking points’ and maintain suspicious levels of optimism very hard to trust/believe? I didn’t come away from reading these documents with the impression that they demonstrate the “lack of integrity” that Ben Pachano, spokesman for Friends of Wild Animals, found – but I also don’t understand why any of this information needed to be a secret.

Bighorn Project Status Update with Late 2014 Release Details, LBN 438

Posted - Charles Miles

The Bighorn Sheep Restoration Project Status update for 10/13 to 10/27 is now available (all updates are currently available here). Like the last update this document has some discussion of the construction of utilization distributions that are described as a “three-dimensional view of an animal’s home range [that] depicts the probability of an animal using a particular location”. This is the first update with details about the planned release of more Bighorn into the Santa Catalina Mountains before the end of the year – a few interesting details:

  • [AZGF] has learned [from working to increase statewide population levels from 1,100 to 5,500 since the 1950s] that one of the keys to success is to augment the founding or resident herd with subsequent translocation efforts. These augmentations help the herd establish faster, generally leading to a decreased future need for direct human intervention. 
  • The wilderness within the Tonto National Forest is the preferred source for Bighorn to translocate – but helicopter landings with Wilderness areas take special authorization – until a decision is reached on permission to use helicopters in the Tonto National Forest Wilderness areas the plan will be to capture bighorn sheep on the Tonto NF outside of designated wilderness and on Bureau of Land Management lands east of Quartzite. 
  • Last year, there was a large gallery of people that observed the release. For the welfare of the sheep, this year the release will be limited to credentialed media and a small number of guests.

There have been a number of news articles about this including: 

 

For something completely different: the UA Science Sky Center Recent Images Gallery has a beautiful picture of nebula LBN 438  from the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter.

New Bighorn Release Planned, Bigelow Sunset – 10/26/2014

Updated - Posted - Charles Miles

More bighorns being relocated to Catalinas, Arizona Daily Star, Doug Kreutz – The first news article that I have seen about the intent to release 30 additional Bighorns into the Santa Catalina Mountains before the end of the year. There are a number of interesting details in the article including: the intended primary source of sheep is from the Tonto National Forest and that “the exact sheep release sites in the Catalinas will not be disclosed to the public”.

The Bighorn Sheep Restoration Project Status update for 9/29 to 10/12 has been available for over a week now (all updates are currently available here) – no changes are noted in population numbers, some interesting research notes are included: “we will use the sheep location data being collected via satellite collars to quantify an “intensity of space use” for each sheep by constructing a utilization distribution (UD)”.

 

1410 Sunset off the Bigelow Road
Clouds in the Sunset from a hillside near the Bigelow Road not far from Mount Bigelow. October 2014.

I enjoyed an evening run on 1918, Secret and Bigelow Road – on 1918 thru Bear Wallow there are still fall colors on the trees and the fallen leaves on the trail were a treat – the big trees on Secret made the dark cool evening even more enjoyable after our long summer – this was the first time I can remember in recent months that it was cool enough for a long sleeve shirt! 4.9 miles, +/- 890′ of elevation gain/loss.