Oregon’s bighorn sheep record is a map of rimrock and canyon country. Of 372 records, Wallowa County alone supplies 93, and the rest stack up along the dry east side, from Harney and Lake counties in the sagebrush sea to Sherman and Gilliam along the breaks of the Deschutes and John Day rivers.
Built for the cliffs
Bighorns are mountaineers, with cloven hooves that grip steep rock, and they stay close to rugged escape terrain where predators cannot follow. Oregon’s records honor that preference. Steens Mountain Wilderness Area holds the most, with Hells Canyon Wilderness, the Wenaha Wildlife Area, and the Phillip P. Schneider Wildlife Area close behind, and the rimrock around John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and Malheur National Wildlife Refuge frames the country between them.
A herd rebuilt from loss
Bighorns once ranged widely across eastern Oregon but were gone from the state by the 1940s, lost to unregulated hunting and disease carried by domestic sheep. Reintroductions beginning in the 1950s reestablished herds on rimrock ranges, and contact with domestic sheep and goats remains their chief threat. The record’s February high and its May and June rise fit that managed landscape: sheep concentrate on low winter ranges within reach of roads, then lambing draws ewes onto open cliffs in late spring.
Status in Oregon
NatureServe ranks the bighorn sheep S3, Vulnerable, in Oregon, reflecting its small, scattered herds. The species is native to the state, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
