364 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



In the State of Washington this sheep is "now nearly extir- 

 pated, though a few are reported as of irregular occurrence in 

 the Mount Chopaka and Mount Bonaparte region. " Formerly 

 they occurred easterly in the Cascade Mountains from the 

 Canadian boundary south to the Columbia River (Taylor and 

 Shaw, 1929). In the 1939 census this State is credited with 

 only ten bighorns. A few still exist also, according to Dr. 

 R. M. Anderson (1939b), "in the southern interior of British 

 Columbia (Okanagan, Similkameen, Lillooet, and Chilcotin 

 districts), but apparently no sheep ever ranged in the Selkirk 

 Mountains. " 



With this race now near extinction from its former range, 

 one asks again why it should so suddenly have begun to dis- 

 appear in the late eighties and nineties, and the answer is no 

 doubt in part that its habit of frequenting lower levels, where 

 it came in contact with the domestic sheep then on the increase, 

 resulted in many areas in its contracting scabies and perhaps 

 other diseases, for there is much testimony to the effect that 

 hunting by white settlers alone did not account for the rapid 

 decline. For example, Bailey (1936) quotes W. F. Schnabel 

 that in the Mahogany Mountains of Oregon, where mountain 

 sheep were plentiful, the^y practically disappeared in 1885, 

 during the winter of that year and the one before. "They did 

 not starve but were killed by some disease. I found their 

 carcasses everywhere and grass and feed were plentiful in those 

 days." Nowadays, with the greater care taken by ranchers 

 to free their domestic stock from the ravages of the scabies 

 parasite, the danger of infecting the feeding ranges is probably 

 lessening, but in many instances this precaution may have 

 come too late to save the bighorns. 



According to Maj. Allan Brooks (1923), the "mountain 

 sheep of the greater part of the dry interior [of British Colum- 

 bia] were wiped out forty or fifty years ago by the introduction 

 of rifles to the Indians and the introduction of domestic sheep 

 to their range. Scab decimated the sheep of the region east of 

 the Fraser River about 1870. A virulent disease that affects 

 the heart and liver is now being introduced in [the Chilcoten 

 and Similkameen River districts] ... by domestic sheep 

 that are brought over to graze from the state of Washington 

 by sheep-herders. The government veterinary at Osoyoos 

 is unable to determine this disease Ticks were 



