For the past few hundred years, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in Idaho have been hit by everything from habitat loss to overhunting to deadly diseases from domestic sheep and goats. As their population and their landscape has shrunk, many now live in isolated pockets in the Salmon River region.
And scientists are finding out that their genetic diversity has begun to shrink too, leaving them less able to adapt to the pressures they face.
Lisette Waits is a Distinguished Professor at the Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences at the College of Natural Resources at the University of Idaho. Her ‘Waits Lab’ has been studying the genetics of everything from pygmy rabbits to red wolves to wolverines and polar bears.
She’s part of a new study on Idaho’s bighorn sheep and she joins Idaho Matters to tell us about it.
