A symbol of the persistent spirit of life in the American West, bighorn sheep have long made their home in the country’s driest desert.

Far before white settlers reached Las Vegas, these hearty animals enjoyed Southern Nevada’s bountiful water sources alongside the Nuwu, or Southern Paiute Native Americans. Tribes viewed their lives as intertwined with the sheep’s lives, hunting them but honoring their sacrifice.

But today, as the nation’s driest state grows more arid, the animals face a dire dilemma: a lack of water needed to survive. With more than 200 days of no measurable rain in the Las Vegas Valley and counting, the clock is ticking as the dry streak threatens to cut off their food source and potentially warrant relocation out of state.

“You can provide as much water as you want to, but it’s going to eventually get to the point where there’s not enough groceries on the ground — or vegetation,” Joe Bennett, the Nevada Department of Wildlife’s southern region game supervisor, said in an interview Friday. “I don’t know when we’ll reach that threshold.”

Bennett joined his wildlife department colleagues at a Nevada Board of Wildlife Commissioners meeting last week, emphasizing the need for officials to pay attention to bighorn sheep populations in the coming months.

“If we don’t take action, there definitely will be hundreds of animals that will die,” Mike Cox, the state’s biologist over bighorn sheep and mountain goats, told commissioners in his report.

Huge water guzzlers not enough

Biologists believe the precarious future of Nevada’s beloved desert bighorn sheep is predicated on climate change.

Southern Nevada’s future is a hotter and drier one, Cox said.

The last two decades have brought more intense periods of drought with higher temperatures and longer days without rain, he said. Instead of three out of 10 years under drought conditions, it’s more like five or six dry years out of 10.

“We’re not going in the right direction in terms of our climate,” Cox said. “I started my career in Las Vegas, and I remember the consistent monsoonal patterns.”

The populations most at risk right now reside in the Muddy Mountains and Arrow Canyon Range near Moapa, McCullough Range on the outskirts of Henderson and the southern Spotted Range near Indian Springs, Cox said.

Boulder City’s beloved herd that mingles alongside humans at Hemenway Park in the River Mountains isn’t on that list, largely because of its proximity to Lake Mead and plenty of year-round grazing.

Extreme drought last hit the bighorn sheep populations from 2020 to 2022, when biologists saw herds move eastward in the Muddy Mountains. That shift in population density has strained water resources even more, Cox said.

In times of extreme dryness, the state wildlife department will conduct water hauls to so-called water guzzlers, or 9,000-to-11,500-gallon tanks that provide drinking water. The state has access to remote sensing technology that shows water levels at each guzzler, and officials said they are planning another water haul this month.

“They’re having to stay on these guzzlers longer,” said Bennett, the game supervisor. “They’re not able to move off of them and use resources that are further away that they would normally use during the winter months.”

Solutions still in the works

It’s not clear yet what route wildlife officials will take to reduce deaths among bighorn sheep in Southern Nevada.

Even with available water, dried-out vegetation isn’t cutting it — and officials aren’t aware of any proven solutions to artificially supplying food sources.

Trans-locating some of the most affected bighorn sheep to either Northern Nevada or out of state to Utah is an option they are considering, Bennett said.

One drawback is that several of the sub-populations suffer from pneumonia strains — an emerging challenge the department has been tracking for at least a decade. Officials don’t want to spread disease, and each herd has its own circumstances, he said.

“We just have to make sure, wherever we likely move them, that we’re not putting them in a bad situation,” Bennett said.

The state wildlife department, along with non-governmental organizations focused on bighorn sheep, will meet and formulate a plan to best manage bighorn sheep populations in the near future. Officials said a more official plan will be presented at the next board meeting scheduled for March 7 and 8.

While no immediate intervention is necessary to sustain the populations, this challenge of drought and disease is one that biologists across the West will grapple with for decades to come.

“That’s the balancing act that we biologists have to play,” Bennett said.

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.