Starting Aug. 12, Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists will conduct a helicopter survey of high-elevation bighorn sheep and mountain goat populations in the Sawatch Range, in Chaffee and Lake counties.

Each flight will last about 3-4 days, dependent on the weather. The flights will traverse the range in the Sawatch Range from Mt Ouray to Leadville. Interruptions associated with the flights are expected to last no more than a few minutes at any one time.

‘The aircraft will spend very little time in an area, counting individual herds, then move on to look for more bighorn sheep and mountain goats,’ according to Stiver, senior wildlife biologist for CPW’s Southeast Region in Colorado Springs.

‘Every year we survey tens of thousands of big game animals statewide and we are collecting data to develop a picture of big game populations across the state of Colorado to help us put those population models together to say how we are going to manage these animals, what numbers of hunting licenses we want to have in the future, what are the population objectives – all the data you see is part of that,’ he says.

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