fullcry, Last spring Park visitors started noticing that bighorns in the Park were coughing, indicating the sheep had been in contact with domestic sheep and were exposed to Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae. That quickly spread outside the park to the hunt unit sheep and many sheep started dying both in and outside the Park. Optimistic plans to transplant hundreds of the Park sheep throughout the state have been canceled.
To this point no one knows how bad the Zion event is, but it appears that the die-off has taken a pretty good tole. Only time will tell but it appears that Utah's premiere desert sheep unit has lost it's luster for many years to come.