Pneumonia has claimed the lives of two more Peninsular bighorn sheep this week in what may be the beginning of a species-threatening epidemic.

Experts still aren't sure what is causing the disease in the endangered species or how to stop it. The two latest dead sheep, found near Highway 74 in the San Jacinto Mountains, bring the tally up to seven fallen bighorns.

"We don't really know if the sheep are going to keep dying or not," said Walter Boyce, director of the Wildlife Health Center at the University of California at Davis. "If there are no more deaths detected, then maybe this is just an isolated outbreak; but what we're concerned with is if the sheep continue to die, this could keep spreading in the local area as well as elsewhere in the Peninsular Range."

Boyce and others speculate that the disease is transmitted either by nose-to-nose contact between the sheep or via one of several types of gnat, indigenous to the area.

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Source: The Desert Sun, Bill Byron
August 19, 2005

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