Pneumonia in bighorn sheep halts hunting near Yellowstone

[Charlie Horse]

Perhaps a breeding program. Add some genetics from other subspecies that can handle a germ here or there. Honestly, the way they are, every single pathogen works like a small-pox plague on natives. People fight for them because they're a native species. Fine. But like Australia, whats 'native' no longer applies since humans have spread a bazillion new species around. My prediction is that in 50,000 years (ignoring radioactive doomsday from 1000 Fukashimas) half the native species everywhere will be extinct, and replaced by something else from somewhere else. Then, in a million years, the new winners will have evolved better to suit the niche and someone would say that these critters are the 'natives' to be protected. Point is that nothing, nothing, nothing is going to set back the clock on the species spread that we've done. Carp in our lakes: Here to stay. Starlings: Here to stay. Tons of imported garden plants and trees: Here to stay. Africanized bees: Here to stay. Fire ants: Here to stay. Snakes and whatever: Here to stay. The horse: Here to stay (good!). Are the native mountain sheep here to stay? Somehow I kinda doubt it. They're less capable than the weird and awkward and designed-by-committee llama. Consider that 15,000 years ago something (I doubt humans) wiped out most of the large animals in N. America including elephants, giant sloth monsters, rhinos, horses (guarantee humans didn't do that considering a few Spanish horses repopulated the place easily while humans were well established), dire wolves, cave bears, saber tooth cats, giant elk, cheetah type cats, etc etc. How those mountain sheep survived is a mystery since they're so anti-hardy.