More good news:
Capital Public Radio reported eight of the transplanted ewes are pregnant and will give birth this spring.
The article refers back to "John Muir's time." Back then, there were 10s of thousands of domestic sheep grazing in Yosemite in the summers, doing massive damage to meadows and interbreeding with the wild sheep. It was illegal, but there were no penalties in place, so it took creativity to stop it. According to Farquhar's "History of the Sierra Nevada," when shepherds were caught, the army escorted them for days to a far corner of the park before ejecting them. It took several more days for the shepherds to get back to their herd on the other side of the park. Meanwhile their sheep roamed wild and were decimated. Cruel and unusual perhaps (for the sheep), but it worked until proper authority was enacted to manage the park.
Edited typos
