The Big Horn Sheep of Glacier National Park

The bighorn sheep, with its large, curling horns and imposing presence, is a symbol of the North American west. These hardy animals live in the cold mountains of the west, and are an important element of the wildlife of Glacier National Park Bighorns are hardy, intimidating animals. When only days old, these creatures can scale cliffs and easily keep out of the way of predators. The males’ thick horns grow up to 45 inches long, and curl rather menacingly around their eyes. The dramatic head-butting of bighorn males competing for dominance figures in any animal documentary about the area. They seem as ever-lasting as the stones around them.

But these tough-and-hardy icons of Glacier National Park and the American west are in trouble. Two-hundred years ago, about 1.5 to 2 million bighorn sheep called North America home. Today that number has been drastically reduced. With only 28,000 bighorn sheep remaining on the continent and only 400 to 600 remaining in Glacier National Park, bighorns have been listed as a “species of concern”-- they’re at real risk of becoming endangered.

Why has the bighorn population in Glacier National Park and the rest of the continent seen such a decline? Many factors are involved; and as usual, most of them result from the actions of man. For one, bighorns are vulnerable to the diseases of our domestic sheep; they also see their foraging areas devastated by them. Another big factor in the falling bighorn population is the dramatic reduction of their habitat. Mountain meadows are bighorns’ main grazing spots, and these are being steadily reduced by encroaching forests-- forests which used to be controlled by the natural forest fires that we now work so hard to prevent.

To protect the bighorn sheep of Glacier National Park, wildlife biologists like Kim Keating of the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center are striving to understand them better. Bighorns are frequent residents of the most visited parts of Glacier National Park, and have been observed there for decades. However, much about their lives, especially where they forage in winter, has been a mystery for years. To learn more about the habits of the bighorn, biologists like Keating have fitted the animals with battery-powered GPS unit collars. These units track their location every five minutes for an entire year, and give wildlife biologists huge insights into the wintering, birthing (or lambing), and mating spots of the bighorn sheep.

Without the support of people like Keating, the bighorn could easily wind up on the endangered species list. To learn more about protecting this important Glacier National Park species, visit the Smithsonian Magazine website at the following link: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/