decon

I'm surprised you've got any ax left to grind!

Archeological evidence indicates sheep arrived in North America from Asia about 40,000 years ago. Evidence also indicates they had populated most western mountain ranges at least 20,000 years ago. It's likely the sheep that were eliminated from the Catalinas by the 1990's had been living there continuously for thousands of year. We'll never know exactly what happened to those sheep but with all the current sheep gps collared we'll know what happens to them for the most part. This project is mostly restoration effort and part experiment.

Thanks Larry, you're always an informed voice of reason.

Beautiful ram, congratulations! By the way, it came from a tranplant population where in the first few years after the initial tranplant 50% of the total collared sheep mortalities were from lions. Hope the naysayers on the Catalina project pay attention and have a little patience!

You should get better informed about your "backyard". This is the first ever transplant of bighorn sheep into the Santa Catalinas. Losses to lions were expected and predicted. The source sheep for this transplant came from populations where lions are not common and therefore the sheep are likely naive about lions, it will take them a while to figure out the new predator and their new surroundings. Not sure what you mean about transplant failures since the 60's but I can think of at least 15 mountain ranges that have healthy sheep populations as the result of transplants. I'm disappointed so many people are throwing in the towel on this after 2 weeks.