A Homecoming for Bighorn Sheep in Colorado
SEDALIA, Colo. — The mechanics were simple. A trailer latch popped, a gate swung open and three wild bighorn sheep — two females, presumably pregnant, and a year-old lamb, definitely frisky — trotted up the rocky slope of Thunder Butte under a pale afternoon sun.
It is the back story of the animals’ release this week by wildlife biologists here in the mountains southwest of Denver that can stagger the mind with its complications of coincidence, historical accident, devastation and hope.
A truck breakdown on a highway in February 1946 played a role, believe it or not, as did the biggest Colorado wildfire in memory, the Hayman, in June 2002. The fire roared through the cliffs in the Pike National Forest with flames hundreds of feet high, scouring the land of trees across 138,000 acres.
Human intervention, from the mining boom in the late 1800s, when timber was cut by the trainload for fuel and construction, through the bighorn reintroduction program in the Hayman burn area by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, begun last year, completed the circle of natural and wild that brought the bighorns home. They were last seen in this area in the mid-1960s....
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It is the back story of the animals’ release this week by wildlife biologists here in the mountains southwest of Denver that can stagger the mind with its complications of coincidence, historical accident, devastation and hope.
A truck breakdown on a highway in February 1946 played a role, believe it or not, as did the biggest Colorado wildfire in memory, the Hayman, in June 2002. The fire roared through the cliffs in the Pike National Forest with flames hundreds of feet high, scouring the land of trees across 138,000 acres.
Human intervention, from the mining boom in the late 1800s, when timber was cut by the trainload for fuel and construction, through the bighorn reintroduction program in the Hayman burn area by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, begun last year, completed the circle of natural and wild that brought the bighorns home. They were last seen in this area in the mid-1960s....