Desert bighorn are a Zion comeback. NPS gave a count of over 500 in 2018, and a survey that November put the whole population, including groups outside the park, at about 800. The rut runs July through October. Biologists watch the herd's density, because roaming sheep can catch fatal disease from domestic sheep and goats.
See anything moving on the ledges? Desert bighorn sheep live along this road, and getting them back took some doing. They vanished from Zion by the nineteen fifties. In nineteen seventy-three a group of twelve came from Lake Mead to a holding pen, eighty acres near what was then the park's visitor center in Zion Canyon. A Park Service newsletter from April of nineteen seventy-seven tells what came next. Each sheep, three legs tied, was blindfolded, slipped into a canvas bag, and flown five minutes by helicopter to Parunuweap Canyon, where bleats were heard for the first time in nearly twenty-five years. It worked so well that Zion ended up exporting sheep. In twenty seventeen, crews netted them from helicopters over the cliffs and flew them out dangling below, to restock San Juan County. Sheep don't stop at the park gate. One herd, the Barracks, lives east of the park along the East Fork of the Virgin River. They wander onto the pavement, so watch the road. The state cut the speed limits out here from fifty-five, partly for wildlife. A multi-use path runs along the south side of the highway too, so expect walkers and cyclists. If you stop to look, stay at least a hundred feet back. Newborn lambs show up from mid-January through the end of April, a long way from a canvas bag.
Photo: NPS Photo / Katie Raney · Public domain