Desert bighorn sheep in the Sespe Wilderness | Photo: Chuck Graham

All it took was a crumbly shard of shale cascading down a steep cliff face to force me to look upward into the blue skies above the Sespe Wilderness, part of the Los Padres National Forest.

Then it took a majestic desert bighorn sheep ram nimbly traversing toward me to make me forget about how exposed I was on my lofty, precarious perch. His gaze captivated, and his gregariousness knew no bounds as it approached to within 25 feet of me.

Still, hunger was a priority for the burly ram. He eventually grew bored with me and easily turned his attention to a steady diet of birch-leaf mountain mahogany, hollyleaf cherry, and spiny rush.

Sespe Survival

A desert bighorn sheep in the Sespe Wilderness | Photo: Chuck Graham

For more than 100 years, desert bighorn sheep were extinct from the Sespe Wilderness. The usual suspects: hunting pressure, disease, and habitat loss wiped out the iconic desert dwellers by the late 1800s.

However, in 1985 and again in 1987, California Fish and Game performed two separate translocations of desert bighorn sheep totaling 36 animals. The bighorn arrived from Cattle Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains. The Sespe Wilderness has historically been the furthest west in desert bighorn sheep’s range. The translocated bighorn sheep were released near the south slopes of San Rafael Peak at 6,634 feet high and Mutau Flat.

And although the initial translocation was successful, with 28 of those bighorn sheep fitted with VHF radio collars, the aftermath was not. Following their translocations, huge windstorms scattered the small herds far and wide away from escape terrain like San Rafael Peak, Unfortunately, by 1989, 16 of those bighorn sheep were confirmed dead, likely from mountain lion predators.

“Monitoring efforts for this population were extremely difficult in the 1990s and early 2000s with a small population in highly inaccessible terrain,” said Dustin Pearce, an environmental scientist with California Fish and Wildlife, and the unit biologist in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties covering the Sespe bighorn sheep population. “By 2003, the population was considered extremely reduced/extirpated.”



Then the Day Fire happened in September 2006. The blaze consumed 160,000 acres of the Sespe Wilderness. It’s just what the Sespe bighorn needed for survival. Bighorn sheep rely heavily on their keen eyesight for spotting apex predators, mainly mountain lions.

When the two translocations occurred in the 1980s, their habitat surrounding San Rafael Peak was overgrown, allowing predators to pick off unwary bighorn sheep. However, the Day Fire leveled the playing field for prey and predator, and the wildfire enabled desert bighorn in the Sespe to increase their numbers. It also allowed hikers and backpackers reveling in the Sespe Wilderness to occasionally spot bighorn sheep traversing steep cliffs and narrow canyons in their newly opened habitat.

As those sightings increased, survey efforts were reinitiated on the Sespe desert bighorn sheep population with a collaring effort that took place in 2017. Nineteen animals were collared, providing new information on home range and space use. In 2019, the population estimate was 119 bighorn sheep with a confidence interval of 88-150. And there’s hope that desert bighorn sheep will expand in various regions of the Sespe. Unconfirmed reports include sightings of bighorn near Thorn Point several miles west of San Rafael Peak, and there are confirmed reports of them east to McDonald Peak at 6,870 feet high.

Confirmed Sighting

They were resting on a steep, open slope on a nameless potrero between San Rafael Peak and the narrow spine of Johnson Ridge. Ten desert bighorn sheep all facing eastward, spotted by one of the 10 guides I work with at the Channel Islands National Park. A couple of us were armed with binoculars, and that’s when Jerry blurted out, “There’s some bighorn right there,” as he pointed in their direction. They were at least a mile away from us, and about four miles north of the Sespe River.

The ram sat above the band of sheep that included two lambs, a great sign that their numbers continue to grow in the Sespe. As we followed the rolling Johnson Ridge, we kept tabs on the sheep as they seemed to be enjoying mild, 60-degree temps in the Sespe. During our last rest stop on the ridge, the bighorn all got up and sauntered east into a narrow ravine descending to a shaded creek below.

“Since 2019, we have not had any helicopter surveys for this population but have had ground surveys, when possible,” said Pearce. “The population does appear to be healthy, but we will need additional information soon on vital rates (survival, reproductive rates) and specifically genetic diversity.”

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