In April 2006, Dr. John Wehausen, a leading authority on Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, spoke to the Sierra College class named Interdisciplinary 6: The Sierra Nevada.

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Biography

Dr. John Wehausen is a research scientist at the University of California, White Mountain Research Station in Bishop, California, Wehausen is a population ecologist who has studied bighorn sheep populations in California for nearly 30 years. Currently President of the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Foundation, he is considered the leading authority on this endangered mammal.

Wehausen’s field studies and laboratory investigations have taken him through California’s Sierra Nevada and the White-Inyo Range. His extensive fieldwork has helped map the remaining populations of the unique Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, distinctly different from other Desert bighorn sheep species.

Due largely to extensive domestic sheep grazing in high rangelands and meadows on the flanks of the mountain range, the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep have avoided winter ranges. Diseases of domestic sheep have decimated the once more-widely distributed Sierra bighorn and the population of this rare species hit a low of approximately 100 total sheep in 1995.

The Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep was the first species to be listed by the federal government as endangered in the 21st Century. This followed a 1999 classification of the sheep as endangered by the California Fish and Game Commission.

In spite of a successful program to reestablish the bighorn in its historic range,; harsh winter seasons,; diseases attributed to domestic livestock,; and predation by mountain lions has kept the species’ population relatively low.