(Updated 7 p.m.) Wildlife officers captured 14 bighorn sheep — three rams and 11 ewes — in the Tonto National Forest northeast of Phoenix on Wednesday, officials said. Some of the ewes are pregnant.
The bighorns were to be brought to the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson and released there Thursday morning as part of a plan to rebuild a bighorn herd that disappeared from the range in the 1990s.
"We're on target for the release Thursday based on a successful operation today," Mark Hart, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, said Wednesday afternoon. "We're going to continue (efforts to capture more sheep) until it's too dark or conditions prevent us from continuing.
"The maximum number we would take from the area would be 20 animals," Hart said.
Wildlife officers captured the animals using net guns fired from helicopters.
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Tentative plans call for capturing additional bighorns Thursday in mountains near Quartzsite in Western Arizona. Those sheep would be released in the Catalinas on Friday.
The department, which is overseeing the project, is seeking to release about 30 bighorns in all this month. The newly released animals are expected to join the 12 surviving bighorns from a group of 31 brought to the Catalinas last November. The other transplanted bighorns have died, most of them victims of mountain lions, and three lions have been killed for preying on sheep.
