Bighorn Sheep

Dick Conti remembers the day, about a decade ago, when a mere four hours of quietly sitting in a cold, windy canyon brought the ultimate reward: sighting a bighorn sheep scrambling 300 feet up the face of a sheer rock cliff. * If only it were that easy now. In March, the latest helicopter survey turned up only 60 bighorn sheep in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Glendora, down from 222 in 1992. In the 1980s, aerial counts found as many as 500 bighorns.

Bighorn Help--The Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep is looking for volunteers to assist in the construction of environmental water storage and drinking devices in the federal California Desert Conservation Area boundaries. Dedicated to desert habitat improvement, the bighorn sheep society works in cooperation with the state Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologists.

Endangered peninsular bighorn sheep are struggling to survive above the Coachella Valley. The captive breeding program at the Bighorn Institute has added to bighorn numbers, helping prevent their extinction. Habitat loss is the immediate threat to the northern herds, but high predation rates and disease have plagued all sheep in the range. -- Habitat and urbanization Peninsular bighorns have suffered as development encroaches on their range in the foothills above the Coachella Valley.

Environmentalists are hailing a U.S. Forest Service decision to suspend livestock grazing in parts of the eastern Sierra Nevada to help protect endangered bighorn sheep as a prime example of how the Endangered Species Act can be used successfully to bring wildlife back from the brink of extinction.

Los ANGELES County bighorn sheep numbers plummeted 90% in the last two decades, making it one of the most imperiled herds in the West, but the federal government has cut funds to study the animals. Pinching pennies to balance the budget deficit, San Bernardino National Forest officials cut $650,000 for bighorn research. The agency can fund only about one-third of a study to see if terrain cleared of brush by fires helps sheep escape mountain lions.

Peninsular bighorn sheep have lived in this sun-drenched oasis and the parched mountains looming above as long as Native Americans have been here. It is an ancient relationship enshrined in the bighorn statue chained securely in front of the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians' downtown administrative offices. But now, the tribe is suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking to withdraw special protection of 844,000 acres for the endangered sheep.

California Fish and Game officials are proposing to kill endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep when they come in contact with domestic sheep believed to transmit highly contagious fatal diseases to the wild herds.

Over the last six years, a battle to save the endangered bighorn sheep has succeeded beyond the expectations of the state and federal agencies and advocacy groups that launched the project along the eastern Sierra Nevada in California and Nevada. The numbers of this unique species, separate from the desert bighorn in Southern California, have rebounded from about 100 to as many as 350. Now the state Fish and Game Department and the U.S.

Regarding "Distress Signals" [July 5]: I don't know what radio collars weigh, but I'm sure the bighorn sheep in the photo would rather be left alone. I'm all for learning about wildlife as long as we show respect for the animals. Erin Scarlett Oceanside