JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - Wildlife biologists are seeing signs of an outbreak of pneumonia in a bighorn sheep herd in northwest Wyoming.
The persistent coughing that’s telling of the bacteria-triggered respiratory sickness has been seen in two lambs in the Jackson Bighorn Sheep Herd that congregates in Jackson Hole.
Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologist Aly Courtemanch she is concerned for the herd.
“The lamb was coughing really severely for about two minutes straight,” she said. “That’s concerning. Sometimes, you see sheep cough out here a little bit, but to cough for two minutes straight is a sign it has pneumonia.”
The Jackson Bighorn Sheep Herd, like many around the Mountain West, is no stranger to outbreaks of pneumonia, a condition caused by infectious pathogens passed along from domestic sheep. The first outbreak that shows up in literature hit in 1930, when there were an estimated 1,200 bighorns in the herd.
By 1934, just 225 of the native sheep remained.
“And it has never recovered,” Courtemanch told the Jackson Hole News & Guide.
Contemporary outbreaks struck in 2001 and, most recently, between 2011 and 2013. The die-off around the turn of the century took out half the herd, killing all age classes and both genders.
The last flare-up was less severe and more selective, claiming mostly ewes and lambs and slashing the herd by about 30 percent. The population has slowly climbed back since and was last tallied at 371 animals - just under the Wyoming Game and Fish’s 400-sheep objective for the herd.
There are no treatments to combat the malady, Courtemanch said, and research has found that culling infected animals does not work.
“There’s really not much we can do, other than trying to understand this a little better,” Courtemanch said. “But we’ll see. I’m hoping it’s just two coughing sheep and nothing happens.”
Wildlife managers plan to locate and euthanize the two infected lambs so their bodies can be sent to the laboratory to determine what triggered the suspected pneumonia.
Bighorn sheep can carry five types of infectious pathogens implicated in pneumonia outbreaks, and some are more deadly than others.
“It would be useful to know which ones these lambs have,” she said.
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Information from: Jackson Hole (Wyo.) News And Guide, http://www.jhnewsandguide.com
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