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Young World
NEWSCAN
Protect the bighorn
COMPILED BY R. KRITHIKA
Photo: AP
A desert bighorn ram: Endangered species.
Biologists in southern New Mexico are working on an ambitious plan to monitor one of the state’s endangered species: the desert bighorn sheep. The plan is to tranquilise and capture 72 sheep and fit them with radio collars that will allow the researchers to keep track of the animals. The project is under way across six mountain ranges in the state. Once common across the state, the species began declining due to disease and drought. A restoration programme that began in 1980 arrested the downslide. Scientists estimate that there are about 425 sheep in New Mexico; 2.5 times the number about six years ago. Biologist Elise Goldstein, who works with the Game and Fish Department, told AP that the state had also decided to keep the number of mountain lions under check. Mountain lions prey on the desert bighorn and at one point were responsible for about four-fifths of the bighorn deaths.
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