Texas
Contributor: What the great Texas bighorn sheep experiment tells us about rewilding the West
FRANKLIN MOUNTAINS, Texas — Two big rams bolted from the steel trailer, took a few hesitant steps and glanced around nervously at their new home: dramatic mountains in west Texas more than 200 miles from where they grew up. Within seconds of looking in all directions, they scrambled into the crevices of peaks that reach 7,000 feet above sea level. A knot of onlookers, more than 100, burst into cheers.
A victim of livestock disease, reckless hunting and the destruction of their Chihuahuan Desert habitat, these creatures vanished once from Texas. The last documented sighting of a native was in 1958 in the Sierra Diablo range to the southeast, and decades of conservation efforts followed with mixed success. But on a warm afternoon in December, 77 of these animals were captured near the town of Alpine and hauled back home to build a large wild herd — another chapter in the rewilding of the American West.
The desert bighorn, distinct from its Rocky Mountain cousin, ranges from the Chihuahuan Desert here to Utah, Nevada and the Mojave and peninsular deserts of California. The urbanized Texas landscape to which these megafauna return is vastly different from the one where they vanished decades ago. Restoring the natural balance in today’s West will involve humans, predators and other animals, a fragile balancing act that could be rich with reward.
I grew up in the city of El Paso and never saw a bighorn. Though I roamed the mountains of this region, often with my late father, I rarely glimpsed any endangered or threatened creatures, their numbers so small, their struggles for survival limited to the folds of mountains and arroyos. Yet in the last decade, I have seen mountain lions and bobcats in broad daylight and have caught the once nearly extinct Gila trout, slipping it alive and well back into its cold native waters. Now the bighorn was just a foot away.
The desert bighorn is legendary. The ancestors of Native Americans drew pictures of this keystone creature centuries ago in the Coso Range of California to the west and nearby in Three Rivers, N.M. This wild sheep was thought to be foundational to life in the desert: a spirit animal that guided predators, including humans, to food — often its own flesh — water and cover from the fierce Southwestern sun. But after Europeans arrived and expanded their westward settlements, especially in the 19th century, they loosed herds of cattle, horses and other livestock that competed with sheep for grazing while spreading disease.
In the 1950s, Texas began the painstaking process of redressing humans’ disruption of nature. Ovis canadensis nelsoni were imported from Nevada and raised on a private ranch near Alpine — right nearby, in Texas terms. Their numbers grew from fewer than 20 in the 1970s to more than 100 by the ’90s. Missteps occurred too: A herd transplanted near Van Horn was nearly wiped out by mountain lions, and bighorn have taken a hit from pneumonia spread by a rival sheep, the hardy and bearded aoudad, which carry the infection and are less affected by it. But the state rebuilt the bighorn population to about 1,500. Today, around 20,000 of them are scattered across the wilds from west Texas to the Mojave.
These animals are big, about the size of a mule deer, with some males weighing over 150 pounds. They’re also tough: What water they do get normally comes from their steady diet of desert plants, including cacti and other succulents. Herds can go long periods without water, which allows them to stay in places predators cannot follow. They can become dangerously dehydrated but recover quickly when they finally find a hidden desert seep. In west Texas, they will be tempted to explore the desert public lands to the north and northeast. Wary, with laser-sharp eyesight, they often stand hindquarter to hindquarter facing different directions on the lookout for coyotes and mountain lions.
A recent camera survey by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department didn’t spot any mountain lions in the Franklin Range, a department mammalogist, Dana Karelus, told me. Yet the occasional lion does roam here; in the last 15 years these big cats have been sighted in El Paso near a car wash, in a neighborhood and inside the city zoo.
But a stray ewe or a wobbly lamb makes a far bigger meal than, say, a house cat. The presence of the bighorns, then, is likely to draw lions toward the mountains instead of the city, where their visits are already rare. Coyotes adapted to urban environments may venture back into the mountains during lambing season. Omnivorous bears occasionally wander here too and will be enticed by a big meal, even a carcass, as long as it doesn’t take too much work. “It is a delicate balance in the case of urban areas,” Karelus told me.
Humans might glimpse these wild sheep when they venture onto the 100 miles of trails crisscrossing the 27,000 acres of Franklin Mountains State Park. And they should keep a lookout, especially in the deep nights of winter, on Texas Loop 375, a busy highway that cuts east to west. On the day of the bighorns’ release, highway signs flashed: “WATCH FOR WILDLIFE.”
“We fully expect them to stay up high,” Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Director David Yoskowitz said. “They want to stay away from humans. We feel very confident, we just have to respect each other’s space.”
The desert bighorn is bumping into other man-made obstacles across the Southwest. Nevada has built the most robust population through dedicated conservation efforts. But Southern California’s wild sheep are hemmed into small islands surrounded by oceans of city. Their survival and expansion depend upon corridors of travel from one group to another to promote the genetic diversity needed for adaptation. One California herd has actually grown in the Angeles National Forest because of a landslide decades ago in the San Gabriel Mountains that severed more than four miles of State Highway 39, according to California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Rebecca Barboza. With the road since closed to all but emergency vehicles, the bighorn ewes have had unimpeded access to prime lambing ground, plentiful forage and water.
“Without humans around, they really thrive,” Barboza said. “The forest is an island. These animals need to spread out — or die.”
In today’s urbanized Southwest, much as the animals will have to adapt, humans have to learn to share space with these homecoming creatures. In the Franklin Mountains’ new bighorn herd, it turns out half the ewes are pregnant: A new generation of lambs is due this spring.
Watching the bighorn run, I heard something I didn’t expect: silence. Their uniquely rubbery hooves made nary a sound as they darted toward the purple peaks. And in the fading light, the desert bighorn reappeared and disappeared all at once into the gathering winter dusk.
Richard Parker wrote this essay for The Times over the winter. A longtime journalist, commentary writer and author, his latest book, “The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest and America’s Forgotten Origin Story,” was published March 4. Parker died earlier this month.
For more than a year, high-profile Texas Republicans have argued that Muslims are secretly plotting to take over Texas, centering their outrage on the East Plano Islamic Center, a mosque and Muslim community in North Texas known as EPIC. That hysteria resulted in a range of government enforcement actions last year, including a probe by the Texas Funeral Service Commission that barred EPIC from performing funeral rites. Last July EPIC sued the state, alleging Texas had violated its religious freedom. Late Wednesday, a federal judge in the Western District of Texas ruled that the mosque’s lawsuit can proceed despite the state’s attempt to dismiss it. In his ruling, the judge also issued a strong rebuke to claims made by Governor Greg Abbott and other state officials, writing that “no evidence has been presented” that EPIC intends to impose “Sharia law,” Islamic teachings based on the Quran and words of the Prophet Muhammad, on Texans.
The case stems from last March, when the funeral commission issued a cease and desist order that barred the mosque from performing traditional cleansing, shrouding, and prayer over bodies, on the grounds that EPIC may have been unlawfully conducting such rites without a license. (EPIC denies this allegation.) As Texas Monthly has reported, the agency was pushed to issue the order by some of Abbott’s closest advisers, who had made unsupported claims that EPIC and a proposed housing development it was affiliated with, EPIC City, was building a “no go zone” exclusive to Muslims (it was not).
EPIC sued the funeral commission in July 2025, arguing that the cease and desist order was an unconstitutional prohibition on religious practices. In Islam, preparing bodies for funerals stands as one of the most sacred rites; by the time of EPIC’s lawsuit, according to the petition, at least eleven congregants had been forced to receive rites elsewhere—away from their home mosque.
EPIC later amended its lawsuit to include former funeral commission chair Kristin Tips after text messages were released showing she had shared anti-Muslim messages and videos as the agency’s investigation unfolded. Among the examples was a graphic Tips had sent to the commission’s then–executive director, Scott Bingaman, that accused Islam of allowing child marriage and pedophilia. After sending it, Tips texted Bingaman a YouTube video with the title: “EPIC CITY TEXAS! Are Muslims planning a TAKEOVER?”
For nearly a year, the case has been locked in a procedural back-and-forth as Tips and the agency—represented by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office—have pushed for the court to dismiss the case. Late Wednesday evening, Judge David Alan Ezra, a Ronald Reagan appointee, issued an order denying Tips’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit. He also rejected Tips’s claim of qualified immunity, which can shield government officials from personal liability in civil cases. That rejection is rare in courts, such as this one, that appeal to the Fifth Circuit, which is one of the most conservative federal appellate courts in the country and is typically welcoming to government defendants.
In his ruling, Ezra cited the funeral commission’s deviation from historical norm in the EPIC case, as the agency has repeatedly asserted—first in 1987 and again in 2014—that Islamic religious organizations could conduct funeral and burial services without government oversight. The judge also affirmed that the alleged conduct—including the cease and desist order and Tips’s anti-Muslim messages—was seemingly “the result of religious discrimination” that violated EPIC’s clearly established religious rights under the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and other laws protecting religious liberty. In a rather remarkable footnote, the judge added that, based on the evidence offered, the court firmly rejected claims “suggesting that EPIC has applied, or intends to apply, ‘Sharia law’ in its practices.”
Though the case will now continue to wind through the courts, the judge’s ruling is a firm rebuke of the anti-Muslim political hysteria fueled by Abbott and his team of advisers. As Texas Monthly reported this month, the governor’s inner circle took an unusually active role in the funeral commission’s regulatory case against EPIC. After being looped into the agency’s pending investigation, which stemmed from an April 2024 complaint levied by a private individual, the governor’s attorneys, including Abbott’s general counsel, Trevor Ezell, edited the boilerplate cease and desist order the commission was ready to issue to make it more severe and punitive.
The original document, drafted by a funeral commission staffer, included a line warning that noncompliance would result in the agency taking “legal action.” Abbott’s team struck that line and suggested replacing it with a “criminal referral” to the Collin County district attorney—in what amounted to a hijacking of the agency’s usual independent regulatory process. At one point, a close adviser of Abbott even reported to a commission staffer that Abbott had texted him that after the cease and desist order was sent out, the funeral commission was his new favorite agency.
Over the following months, the governor’s advisers, including Ezell and a budget and policy adviser, Alex Aragon, weighed in often on the EPIC probe, requesting regular updates, coordinating public statements, and, at times, directing regulatory action. When the agency investigated other cases—such as a high-profile incident in which a Dallas funeral home allegedly accidentally shipped a stillborn baby to a Louisiana laundry facility—the governor’s team exhibited no similar interest. More than a year after the funeral commission’s cease and desist order, its investigation remains ongoing. No violations have been found.
Tips, the agency’s former chair, led the funeral commission until March 12, when, according to an email obtained by Texas Monthly, she “prayerfully” resigned, effective immediately, late in the night. While the circumstances around her departure remain unknown, she had spent months under fire for allegations that she had illegally lobbied for tort reform in her position as chair, which she denies. But in her absence, the governor’s pursuit of EPIC has continued. In March, the funeral commission issued a broad new subpoena to EPIC, seeking every record of funeral services that the mosque has on file.
After EPIC’s attorneys pushed back, arguing the order was too large in scope, Paxton’s office got involved—issuing a letter that demanded EPIC comply. Meanwhile, Abbott has continued his crusade against the mosque, going on Fox News earlier this week to deride EPIC and what he alleged were “multiple violations” of the law. The governor has touted that a dozen state agencies have investigated EPIC. To date, no criminal charges have been filed against the mosque, and a federal probe into EPIC by the the Department of Justice was dropped with no findings of malfeasance.
The NHL took the first step toward expansion in Texas earlier this week, agreeing to terms with billionaire Dan Friedkin and his family to explore the feasibility of putting a franchise in Houston or Austin.
Far enough from the Dallas Stars, who relocated from Minnesota in 1993, a new team would not interfere with their territorial rights. And the league has shown no fear of adding one team at a time, so No. 33 does not have to come with No. 34.
“Symmetry I don’t think should necessarily govern expansion,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday. “You expand if you think it makes sense and enhances what the league has.”
What is behind the NHL’s interest in Texas
Money is the obvious answer. Bettman said the total investment of the project would be some $3.5 billion, which would include expansion fees paid to established owners along with the cost of building a new arena.
The Houston Rockets’ arena downtown is publicly owned but controlled by team owner Tilman Fertitta’s Clutch City Sports and Entertainment group. The home of the American Hockey League’s Texas Stars, in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park, has a capacity of 8,000 that is a little over half the size of the NHL’s smallest current rink (Winnipeg).
“I would be surprised if the NHL would be OK with an expansion team that does not have a new arena,” said Brian Mills, an associate professor at the University of Texas who teaches courses on sports economics and strategy. “The revenue potential with the luxury boxes and the way that they set those up and the money that they like to extract from the local cities is way too large to pass up.”
They are also huge markets. Houston at nearly 2.4 million is the fourth-most-populated U.S. city; Austin at just over 1 million is in the top 12.
“Obviously it makes sense if you’re a sports league to have a franchise in the nation’s fifth-largest metro area and one that is growing rapidly,” said Holy Cross professor Victor Matheson, an expert in sports economics. “Houston obviously makes sense in general as a destination for any league.”
Austin is smaller but has doubled its population since the mid-1990s and has seen an infusion of people over the past five years. Only eight of the NHL’s existing markets are bigger.
“It’s becoming more and more of a tech city, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more hockey fans here than there used to be,” Mills said. “I would imagine there’s some market for the NHL here in Austin, particularly more than when it was a sleepy, small town capital of Texas 30 years ago.”
History of hockey in Houston and Austin
When hockey was picking up in popularity in the 1960s and ‘70s and the NHL went from six teams to 18, the rival World Hockey Association was founded and Houston got a franchise when the one in Dayton, Ohio, failed to get off the ground.
The Aeros’ inaugural season was in 1972-78, and they were best known for “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe playing for them along with sons Mark and Marty. They won four Avco World Trophies as WHA champions before folding.
An AHL team using the same name existed in Houston from 1994-2013. The Texas Stars have played in Austin since ’09.
“There’s some interest of hockey,” University of Houston economics professor Steven G. Craig said. “Houston is full of immigrants from around the country and around the world. And Austin is sort of similar in the sense of a pretty heterogeneous population.”
Pros and cons of a Houston or Austin NHL franchise
Growing the sport in another so-called non-traditional spot is a big benefit. Smashing successes in places like Las Vegas and Tampa, Florida, show what hockey can do across the Sun Belt when strong ownership is involved.
“Southern cities have been doing pretty well now these days in the NHL: the Lightning and the Panthers,” Mills said of the two teams in Florida. “You’ve got some pretty good hockey teams after some pretty miserable failures with some earlier expansion to the South.”
Abandoning the second try in Atlanta (the Thrashers from 2000-11) was more a failure of ownership than the market. The same could be said in Arizona, where a revolving door of owners led to arena miscues and eventually the Coyotes being sold and moved to Salt Lake City in 2024 to become the Utah Mammoth.
A 33rd team also means 20-23 more NHL players and hopefuls in the minors. The changing landscape of hockey development at the junior and college levels has the potential to churn more talent through the pipeline in North America than ever before, along with players coming from Europe.
“You do have a pretty big pool of players,” Matheson said. “I’m not particularly worried about diluting the talent there because I think there’s a lot of skill.”
What’s next and where the 34th team may be
After this six-month exploratory phase is complete, recent history suggests a season-ticket drive would be one of the subsequent steps. Ticket drives validated interest that led to the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken.
The Board of Governors would need to approve moving forward in the process. No vote has yet been held, though the executive committee supported exploring Houston and Austin.
And while the NHL is comfortable with unbalanced Eastern and Western conferences, getting to 34 teams seems inevitable if it goes to 33. Bettman said the board on Tuesday was updated on situations in Atlanta and Arizona, and it would be no surprise if one of those places got another crack at it.
ere’s everything you need to know about one of the most recognizable trophies in North American sports — The Stanley Cup.
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