BIG BEND RANCH STATE PARK, Texas -- More than 45 desert bighorn sheep have a new home as part of an ongoing wildlife restoration project in Texas for the animals.
Twelve curly-horned rams and 34 ewes plucked by helicopter from one rugged area of West Texas now call the Bofecillos Mountains along the Rio Grande in Big Bend Ranch State Park home.
Their capture and release days came days before Christmas and was the latest step in returning the mountain sheep to their historic range in Texas. The effort begun in 1954 after unfettered hunting, fencing and disease from other animals decimated their numbers.
All but gone from Texas by the 1960s from more than 1,500 in the late 1800s, efforts to restore them in the Trans-Pecos region have proved successful. Biologists this fall tallied 1,115 sheep.
