The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) invites the greater El Paso community to come celebrate the reintroduction of desert bighorn sheep into their once-native range at Franklin Mountains State Park.
TPWD will be hosting a public event on the afternoon of Dec. 4 at Franklin Mountains State Park in El Paso. The pinnacle of the event will be the first release of desert bighorn sheep into their historic range as part of a long-term restoration project. Desert bighorn sheep once roamed the Trans-Pecos mountains in healthy numbers in the late 1800s. However, by the early 1960s, due to unregulated hunting, resource competition from domestic sheep/goats, and disease, native desert bighorns were extirpated from the West Texas landscape.
Below is the information about the public event:
Where: Franklin Mountains State Park
2900 Tom Mays Access Rd., El Paso, TX 79911
When: Tentatively 3 p.m. Dec. 4.
Please monitor TPWD’s social media pages for a more exact time. (Facebook accounts: Texas State Parks and Franklin Mountains State Park — Texas Parks and Wildlife)