Laying Stepping Stones: in Life, in Conservation

A week ago today, I moved to Montana to work as a naturalist guide and place another stepping stone on my path to being able to be a wildlife conservationist and photographer full-time. And this ungulate is also aiding in laying stepping stones.

Before roads, fences, and settlement transformed the American West, bighorn sheep moved across North America in vast connected populations likely numbering in the millions. These hoofed mammals helped shape alpine ecosystems through grazing, nutrient movement, and their role in the delicate balance between predators, plants, and mountain landscapes. But within little more than a century of said settlement, hunting, habitat loss, and disease transmitted from the European domestic sheep caused catastrophic declines. By the early twentieth century, bighorn sheep had vanished from the majority of their normal range. What followed became one of North America’s great conservation efforts.

Wildlife agencies, tribal nations, and conservationists worked to restore bighorn populations through habitat protection, regulated harvest, and ambitious reintroduction programs that restored bighorns to the mountains they hadn’t occupied for generations. Today, wild bighorn numbers have rebounded to roughly 80,000 animals across the US, and while a remarkable recovery, it’s still only a fraction of their original numbers. Yet unlike many other restored ungulates, bighorn sheep remain uniquely vulnerable, particularly to pneumonia outbreaks linked to contact with domestic sheep.
In 2016 (10 years ago this year), on a brutal winter day near Missoula, Montana, Researchers from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks worked through snow and subzero temperatures to capture and collar wild sheep in the Petty Creek area. Blindfolded gently to reduce stress, each animal was examined, sampled, and fitted with GPS collars that would help scientists track movement, survival, and the spread of disease for years to come.

Conservation, in moments like these, is quiet, patient, and relentless work as frozen hands tighten collars, pilots navigate mountain storms, and biologists search for answers that may determine whether future generations will still find sheep on these cliffs.
In Montana, hope endures in places like Wild Horse Island on Flathead Lake, home to some of the most extraordinary bighorn genetics ever recorded, including several world-record rams recognized by the Boone and Crockett Club. But the true significance of these animals reaches far beyond record books. Their survival reflects something deeper: the resilience of ecosystems when given the chance to recover.