By Craig Nyhus, Lone Star Outdoor News
Parts of Big Bend National Park were closed from Aug. 11-17 as helicopters were used to remove aoudad from the park.
The removal was done in a joint effort with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, using aerial sharpshooters to reduce the numbers of nonnative Barbary sheep in the park so they don’t jeopardize the numbers of native desert bighorn sheep.
The Deadhorse Mountains and surrounding areas, including the Dagger Flat Road and Old Ore Road, were closed to the public while the effort took place.
“It’s really difficult to estimate the numbers of aoudad in the park,” said Froylan Hernandez, TPWD’s desert bighorn program director. “We only flew the northeast part of the park and some of the river, and just in the areas we flew, we counted more than 100 aoudad.”
About 80 of the aoudad were removed, according to Hernandez.
“We also saw 15 to 20 desert bighorns,” Hernandez said. “In years past, we have seen up to 30 in the area — it borders up to Black Gap so they go back and forth. We’ve seen a significant increase in aoudad that seems to correlate with the decrease in bighorns.”
Management of aoudad is in keeping with the Big Bend Exotic Animal Management Plan and Environmental Assessment, finalized in June, 2018.
According to TPWD, aoudad herds compete with native mule deer and bighorn sheep for space, forage and water. Large populations can damage desert plant communities, and aoudad may pose a disease threat to wildlife and livestock.
The issue of competition between aoudad and desert bighorns is the subject of a graduate study by Jose Etchart, a graduate of Sul Ross State University and now a resource biologist with TPWD. The study is expected to be published by the end of the year.
“We’re doing the final analysis work,” Etchart said. “The aoudad are pretty successful breeders, often having two lambs each year. It’s difficult to determine competition based on behavior, but not as hard to determine resource competition. It becomes a question of how many mouths can you have on the mountain and not have it be bare ground.”
Hernandez said hunting can be a tool to help reduce aoudad numbers, but not likely at the national park that has not allowed hunting for the animals. However, he said some areas are so infested that hunting alone won’t reduce the population effectively.
“We run into herds of 200 to300,” he said. “As we move forward with aoudad management, at some point we are going to have to say they are here to stay and focus on keeping the numbers in check to where they don’t affect the desert bighorns and other species.”
Etchart said he works with land owners on dealing with the aoudad.
“People fail to recognize some of the ranchers have a financial incentive to keep aoudad, because they are making money off of them,” he said. “We try to explain how prolific they can be and suggest removing more ewes — they can still keep the trophy rams on the property for hunting.”
