Counting Sheep
Documentary (54 min.)

Counting Sheep chronicles the struggle for survival of the majestic Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep. Shot over twelve years, Counting Sheep raises thorny questions about animal rights and conservation, the importance of larger ecosystems, and the delicate quest for coexistence. At the heart of the film lies the tenacity of the biologists and environmentalists who fight to conserve these noble animals in the face of disease and predation by mountain lions. What is at stake is the future of a species.

The two people most responsible for protecting the bighorn are unlikely allies: biologist, and mountain lion tracker. John Wehausen PhD has studied the bighorn for decades, collecting their bones and genotyping them, and he worked tirelessly to get the Sierra bighorn listed as a Federal Endangered Species. Jeff Davis is a trapper turned mountain lion tracker. A modern day frontiersman who spent much of his youth on the rodeo circuit, Jeff and wife Vickie track lions with hounds to radio collar the lions. Both are passionate about the survival of the bighorn and are concerned about the natural legacy they will leave for their grandchildren.

Bighorn live at elevations of 10-13,000 feet on the snow-dusted crags of the Eastern Sierra, and are said to look from a distance like rocks with legs. Once numbering in the thousands, many Sierra bighorn sheep died in the 1800s due to disease transmitted by domestic sheep. By 1998 the number of Sierra Nevada bighorn had dropped to 100. Protection of mountain lions by the state of California further complicated the efforts to save the bighorn. In 1999 the bighorn won federal emergency endangered species status, trumping the protections California voters had given the mountain lions. Every mountain lion in the thousands of acres of Sierra bighorn range is now collared and monitored. Jeff must kill any lions that can be shown to threaten bighorn. Much conflict about removing lions is stirred in the public, which often does not understand the difference between animal rights and conservation.