The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources will be capturing and transferring Antelope Island Bighorn Sheep to Central Utah in January.
The Bighorn Sheep of Antelope Island will be moved to the Central Utah Mountains near Oak City on January 6. Biologists from the DWR will work with a helicopter crew to move the animals from Antelope Island to a staging area where they will undergo health check-ups.
“First, a capture crew locates the bighorn from a helicopter, and then capture them with a net gun, so they shoot a net over them,” said DWR officer Rusty Robinson. “They then hobble the animals and blindfold the animals to reduce stress.”
The animals will be relocated to the Central Utah Mountains.
“Generally we put a collar on them to track and monitor them long-term,” he said. “Then we load them into a trailer to drive them to their new home where we release them.”
Robinson said the animals are well looked after during the transfer in an effort to make sure the Bighorn Sheep are healthy.
According to defenders.org, at the beginning of the 19th century there were between 1.5 to two million bighorn sheep in North America. Today, there are only 70,000.