By the time the sun started to ease above the horizon, Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist Ty Woodward was already at the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak peering into his spotting scope, looking for bighorn sheep.
The summit, marked with patches of new snow, was quiet as he scanned the grassy slopes and rocky ridgelines for Colorado’s once-threatened state mammal. Below, about 60 more biologists, wildlife officers and trained volunteers with binoculars were dispersed across the mountain, traversing boulders and steep trails on the same mission.
“There’s definitely some sleuthing that goes on,” said Woodward, who organizes CPW’s annual bighorn sheep count atop America’s Mountain.
An accurate count of the Pikes Peak herd and a ratio of rams to ewes, or males to females, is crucial to determine trends in the population size, assess herd health and help make hunting license recommendations.
Now an iconic animal in Colorado, bighorn sheep were near extinction at the turn of the 20th century after diseases introduced through European livestock and unregulated hunting decimated populations throughout the West, according to CPW. Through conservation efforts, the state’s bighorn sheep population bounced back and now sits at about 7,000, the agency estimates.
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