Bighorn Ram - Badlands National Park
by Susan Rissi Tregoning
Title
Bighorn Ram - Badlands National Park
Artist
Susan Rissi Tregoning
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
A magnificent bighorn sheep ram, his curved horns a testament to its adaptation, maintains a vigilant stance atop the sun-drenched, rugged terrain of Badlands National Park in South Dakota.
Audubon's bighorn sheep, also known as the Badlands bighorn, once lived in the northern Great Plains across Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. There is still a debate about whether it should be considered a separate type of bighorn sheep. Some say it was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s, while others believe it survived until 1926. Biologists Wehausen and Ramey argue that it was not a different subspecies but a variation of the Rocky Mountain Bighorn. Recent studies question if the Badlands Bighorn was unique, as Rocky Mountain bighorns now live in their old habitats.
It is thought that Siberian sheep came to North America over 100,000 years ago by crossing the Bering Land Bridge. They moved south, making their home from Canada to Mexico. These sheep evolved into the Bighorn Sheep species found in Badlands National Park, South Dakota.
The bighorn sheep population once numbered around 2 million but dropped to just 20,000 by 1940 due to changes in the American West. Factors like land use changes, hunting, and disease led to their decline. Conservation efforts, which included moving sheep to different parks, helped protect the species. Peter Norbeck, a US senator, helped bring bighorn sheep to South Dakota's Custer State Park in 1922. Badlands National Park received sheep from Colorado in 1964 and New Mexico in 2004.
Today, Badlands National Park is home to about 250 bighorn sheep out of the 80,000 in the United States. With no predators within the park, the bighorn sheep population thrives.
Copyright 2024 Susan Rissi Tregoning
Uploaded
March 15th, 2024
Embed
Share
Similar Images
Recently Viewed
