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John Hollenhorst ReportingWildlife researchers near Moab are using some Gee Whiz technology to answer a question you may never have thought of: Are mountain bikers and jeeps making life hard on Bighorn Sheep? The project has produced some pretty Gee Whiz video too.
A Bighorn sheep on the run, racing with grace 30 miles an hour through a boulder field, a helicopter hot on its tail.
Craig McLaughlin, Utah Div. of Wildlife Resources: "Our helicopter is a short-term harassment that is guaranteed to help the sheep in the long run."
A net gun brings them down in batches. Desert Bighorns, in a neighborhood they once had more or less to themselves. Not anymore.
Craig McLaughlin: "Off-road vehicles, including mountain bikes, do cause some disturbance to sheep. And we have some concerns that there are some critical areas that sheep need to survive that are impacted by people using these machines."
Wildlife wranglers fitted fifteen Bighorns with radio collars. G.P.S. units will receive satellite signals and record each sheep's exact position. Their whereabouts will be recorded several times a day for the next two years. Experts will map the places where Bighorns and recreationists overlap.
Bill Bates, Utah Div. of Wildlife Resources: "What the BLM will do is take those locations and incorporate those into their planning documents, like their land-use plan or their resource management plan."
Scientists won't actually see the GPS data for a couple of years. That's when each collar will give its sheep a big surprise.
Bill Bates: "This has been pre-programmed to detonate on a specific day about two years from now."
Craig McLaughlin: "Has no effect on the sheep. The way it's designed is the explosion is away from the sheep's body and it just separates the two parts of the collar."
Two years from now, the collars will drop to the ground, loaded with data, providing a much better picture of where the elusive animals roam.
The tracking project is downriver from Moab, just outside Canyonlands National Park.
