Year-End Gift It’s that time of year again when everyone is looking at their annual tax-deductible contributions and figuring out whether or not they need to give a little more. We’d love to be the recipient of your “little more”! Bighorn Institute is privately funded 501(c)(3) nonprofit and we could use your help as we care for the captive herd of bighorn, monitor three different herds in the wild, provide important research data to the wildlife agencies and educate the pu

The results are in from the annual water hole count in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the numbers are down with 207 sheep sighted. Overall, they had a good count, but last year they saw 296 sheep. Volunteers spend 3 consecutive days around July 4th at a pre-determined site and count the number of sheep that come in to water and determine their sex and age. Since bighorn sheep rely more heavily on drinking water during summer, this is the best time to do a water hole c

It’s been a tough year for lamb survival throughout the range and there are only a handful of lambs alive in our study areas, which include three herds. This is always disappointing news to report, but there’s a potential silver lining. Several collared ewes in the northern Santa Rosa Mountains herd look like they’ll give birth again in November. Fall lambs and ewes having more than one lamb in a year is an amazing phenomenon that we’ve only seen one other time. We’ll be

Conservation is essentially protecting and managing natural resources to ensure their availability for future generations. With an ever-increasing human population, there are sure to be inadvertent impacts on natural resources. Conservation will always require “give and take.” Every species plays a role in its ecosystem and if you remove one it will likely affect the entire system. Bighorn sheep are an “umbrella species,” which means that they are at the heart of the eco