Bighorns on a Narrow Ledge

State and federal officials need to move quickly to save five dwindling herds of the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep from extinction. First, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should grant an emergency request that the breed be listed as a federal endangered species. Then the state Fish and Game Commission should vote at a meeting Thursday in Riverside to enhance the state status of the Sierra Nevada bighorns from “threatened” to “endangered.”

There were more than 300 bighorns in the mid-1980s, but the number has declined to about 100. They range from just south of Mt. Whitney northward to Lee Vining Canyon east of the Tioga Pass entry to Yosemite National Park. The Fish and Game Commission is considering a program to capture selected bighorns to breed them in captivity, much as the California condor was saved from extinction by captive breeding.

Among the causes of sheep deaths in recent years have been mountain lions--a traditional bighorn predator--and harsh weather, officials said. Mountain lions cannot be hunted under state law, but selected cats can be captured and relocated if they are a threat to an endangered species. These predators pose a double hazard for the sheep, forcing them to spend winters in higher country where there is bitter weather and little food.

If the sheep are given federal protection, the U.S. Forest Service will be asked to create physical buffers to prevent their contact with domestic sheep grazing in the mountains. The domestic herds can infect the wild sheep with a deadly bacterial pneumonia.

The state Fish and Game Commission should be encouraged to embark on the captive breeding program although officials say they do not have enough money and might have to raise about $500,000 from private sources. However tight the state budget, surely the Davis administration could eke enough savings from other programs to finance this urgent effort.