A2 The BulleTin • Monday, augusT 1, 2022
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BIGHORNS BETTING
Some herds
TO BEAT
are recovering
others
BACTERIAL while
continue to
struggle
INFECTION
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B
B
aker County’s
biggest herd of
bighorn sheep,
plagued for more than
two years by a bacterial
infection that leads to fatal
pneumonia, seems to be
thriving in some places,
BY JAYSON JACOBY • Baker City herald
but the situation is much
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less promising in others.
The difference is dramatic,
said Brian Ratliff.
He’s the district wildlife bi-
ologist at the Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife’s
(ODFW) Baker City office.
Ratliff has been tracking
the bacterial outbreak in the
Lookout Mountain bighorn
herd, in far eastern Baker
County, since February 2020.
The herd is not only Baker
County’s, but it has also been
Oregon’s largest herd of Rocky
Mountain bighorns.
The disease also spread to
the county’s other herd of the
agile sheep, which roams in
the Burnt River Canyon be-
tween Durkee and Bridgeport.
The sheep in the Burnt
River herd are California big-
horns, a different subspecies
than the larger Rocky Moun-
tain sheep that inhabits the
Lookout Mountain country
between its namesake moun-
tain and Brownlee Reservoir.
The strain of Mycoplasma
ovipneumoniae bacteria was
first detected in the Lookout
Mountain herd, which in-
cluded about 400 bighorns,
in February 2020 when dead
sheep were found near the
Snake River Road above
Brownlee Reservoir.
Tissue samples from dead
sheep confirmed the strain of
bacteria, the first time it had
been found in bighorn sheep
in Oregon.
During an aerial count in
late 2018, biologists counted
403 bighorns in the Lookout
Mountain unit, 250 in 2020
and 274 in 2021.
In Lookout Mountain, dif-
ferent herds, different results
in 2022
First the good news — and
it’s quite good, Ratliff said.
Two groups of sheep, one
frequenting Connor Creek
Canyon, the other in up-
per Soda Creek, midway be-
tween Huntington and Rich-
land, produced a good crop
of lambs this year. And so far
these lambs seem to be doing
well.
The ratio among those
groups was about one lamb
per ewe, Ratliff said.
“Clearly we had some lamb
survival,” he said on July 5.
In 2020, by contrast, biolo-
gists were initially optimistic
because they didn’t find any
dead lambs in Lookout Moun-
tain as of mid June. They
knew, from earlier testing, that
ewes don’t infect their lambs
prior to birth.
But later in the summer of
2020, as ewes and lambs con-
gregated in what biologists
call “nursery groups,” those
lambs started to sicken and die
across the Lookout Mountain
area.
Ratliff and other biologists
concluded that all of the 65
to 70 lambs born in the unit
lisa Britton/Baker City herald, File
A group of bighorn rams photographed on June 20, 2020, in the Lookout Mountain unit in eastern Baker County.
during the spring of 2020 died
from bacteria-inducted pneu-
monia, along with an esti-
mated 75 adult bighorns.
The situation wasn’t much
better in 2021.
After seeing quite a few
lambs in late spring and early
summer, by late August biol-
ogists knew of just five lambs
that had survived from that
year’s group.
During an aerial census late
in 2021, Ratliff counted just
four lambs.
This summer, the ewes and
lambs are in nursery groups
in upper Connor and Soda
creeks, but the lambs, unlike
in 2020 and 2021, are surviv-
ing.
The situation is quite dire,
however, for another group of
bighorns, Ratliff said.
This bunch, which gener-
ally stays at lower elevations
near the Snake River Road,
running along Brownlee Res-
ervoir between Richland and
Huntington, had lambs this
spring, just as in the previous
two years.
But earlier this month, Rat-
liff said, biologists didn’t see a
single lamb in the area, where
they counted 67 ewes.
Biologists did see lambs ear-
lier this year, he said.
They also saw several ewes
with swollen udders, indicat-
ing they had recently been
nursing a lamb that, presum-
ably, had died.
Tracking ‘chronic shedders’
The key to combatting bac-
terial infection, Ratliff said, is
in sheep that can infect others
through nose-to-nose contact.
These “chronic shedders”
often don’t get sick themselves.
But even a lone shedder can
rapidly infect a large group of
bighorns, many of which are
quite susceptible to the illness,
Ratliff said.
Chronically shedding ewes
are especially troublesome be-
cause they mingle with other
ewes, and lambs, much more
than rams, which are either
solitary or with other rams
most of the year.
ODFW’s strategy for find-
ing chronic shedders is labor-
and time-intensive, requiring
that biologists trap as many
bighorns as possible, test them
for the bacteria, and fit them
“We’ll see what happens in
early winter, when they start
mingling,” he said.
Ratliff said ODFW will
soon start trying to capture
ewes from the lower-eleva-
tion herd to test them for the
presence of the bacteria and,
potentially, identify chronic
shedders.
The goal, he said, is to do
that testing before the still iso-
lated nursing groups start to
congregate later in the year.
lisa Britton/Baker City herald, File
A group of bighorn sheep, including a lamb, in the Lookout Mountain
unit in eastern Baker County on June 20, 2020.
The strain of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae bacteria
was first detected in the Lookout Mountain herd, which
included about 400 bighorns, in February 2020 when
dead sheep were found near the Snake River Road above
Brownlee Reservoir.
with tracking collars so they
can be tested later.
Sheep that are twice deter-
mined to be shedders will be
euthanized.
So far, ODFW has eutha-
nized two ewes in early spring
of this year, each from Look-
out Mountain unit and Burnt
River Canyon, after they were
shown to be chronic shedders
of the bacteria both times.
(Several sheep that were
shedding during a first test
were no longer shedding the
bacteria during a subsequent
test. Other chronic shedders
died naturally before they
were tested twice.)
However, Ratliff said he’s
concerned about one ewe that
has been seen recently by mul-
tiple people near the Snake
River Road, in the vicinity of
Big Deacon Creek, which is
between Connor and Soda
creeks. That ewe is clearly sick,
he said, with obvious symp-
toms such as coughing and a
snotty nose.
Although it’s not certain
that the ewe is infected with
the Mycoplasma ovipneumo-
niae bacteria, that’s plausible,
and of great concern.
One infected sheep “could
wipe out that entire nursing
group,” Ratliff said.
He said two other ODFW
biologists recently found a
ewe that was suspected of be-
ing the ill sheep, as it was in
the same area where the sick
sheep had been seen the pre-
vious day, but it’s not clear
whether the ewe they found
was the same.
The ewe the biologists saw
was decidedly spry, Ratliff
said.
The sheep actually jumped
into Brownlee Reservoir and
swam faster than the biologists
could run along shore to track
it, he said.
Another concern is that the
lower-elevation herd, which lost
its entire crop of 2022 lambs and
might well include a chronic
shedder, will mingle with the
apparently healthy groups that
roam higher in the canyons that
drain into Brownlee.
So far, Ratliff said, there’s no
evidence of such mingling.
And data from tracking col-
lars fitted to sheep from each
of the groups shows that they
stay isolated more than biolo-
gists expected, he said.
“That’s a good thing,” Rat-
liff said.
Until winter, anyway.
During that season the
sheep tend to descend toward
the river where temperatures
are warmer and snow often
absent for much of the winter.
Overall, Ratliff said, “things
are not dismal but not great.”
Origin remains a mystery
Ratliff said biologists don’t
know how the Lookout
Mountain herd was initially
infected with the bacteria.
Mycoplasma ovipneumo-
niae bacteria are not known
to be carried by cattle, but do-
mestic sheep can be infected.
Domestic sheep graze on a
public land allotment, over-
seen by the Bureau of Land
Management, in the Lookout
Mountain unit, Ratliff said.
None of the domestic sheep
that graze on that allotment
has been tested for the bac-
teria.
Two other domestic flocks
near Richland, at the north
end of the Lookout Mountain
unit, were tested in 2020 and
none carried the Mycoplasma
ovipneumoniae bacteria, Rat-
liff said. A llama owned by a
resident along the Snake River
Road was tested, and was also
negative for the bacteria.
Sheep in the Burnt River
Canyon began dying around
October 2020, and Ratliff be-
lieves sheep from that herd
crossed I-84 earlier in the year,
mingled with infected Lookout
Mountain bighorns and became
ill, then returned and began
spreading the bacteria among
Burnt River Canyon sheep.
Burnt River Canyon
This herd is much smaller
than the Lookout Mountain
herd, with about 75 to 85 big-
horns. Although monitoring
the Burnt River Canyon herd
is more difficult because the
bighorns tend to congregate in
the steepest, most inaccessible
terrain, Ratliff said biologists
counted 14 lambs in the area
this spring.
That’s not far below the
pre-infection average of 25 to
30 lambs per year, he said.