A bighorn sheep ram has been spotted and photographed in the Picture Rocks area of the Tucson Mountains, a range west of Tucson where bighorns haven’t thrived since the 1950s, the Arizona Game and Fish Department reported.
Earlier this year, the department tracked the movement of two rams, apparently from a herd at Ironwood Forest National Monument northwest of the city, that roamed for a time in the Tucson Mountains.
The ram spotted in the range on Monday may also have been part of the Ironwood Forest herd, according to wildlife officials.
That herd was threatened by pink-eye from domestic sheep in 2003, causing the death of some bighorns. Game and Fish, the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management captured many of those remaining and administered antibiotics to them, and the herd now numbers between 175 and 200 animals.
The Ironwood Forest herd is separate from one in the Catalina Mountains, where an effort is underway to re-establish a herd that disappeared from the Catalinas in the 1990s.
Game and Fish, noting that there have been other unconfirmed reports of bighorn sightings in the Tucson Mountains, asks members of the public to call the agency at 628-5376 to report sightings.
