Bighorn sheep (yili´k?lxkn) eat feed at a sheep pen on Penticton Indian Band land in syilx territory on July 9. The sheep pen is the hub of a 12-to-18-month-long research project dedicated to developing a drug for treating a life-threatening skin disease impacting the sheep population in the region.

Image Credit: Aaron Hemens, Local Journalism Initiative

Researchers in the Okanagan are working to find a treatment for a skin disease in bighorn sheep (yilík?lxkn), as the animal’s population has been decimated in the region over the past two decades.

A sheep pen at Penticton Indian Band (PIB) is the hub of a 12-to-18-month-long research project dedicated to developing a drug for treating Psoroptic mange.

The life-threatening skin condition has resulted in “large scale die-offs” when it was introduced to the yilík?lxkn population in syilx territories around 20 years ago, explained Mackenzie Clarke, a senior tmix? (wildlife) biologist with the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA).

“There was some really severe mange being seen in the population,” said Clarke.

“They’ve had it for a number of years now, but we’re still seeing that the population has been reduced by about 60 to 70 per cent. They’re not really growing as much as you’d like them to. The population numbers are kind of stagnated.”

According to Clarke, there are 700 bighorn sheep across the Okanagan Valley in syilx homelands. 

In the west side of the valley, there’s a herd of 270 to 300 sheep grappling with the mange disease, which passed onto them through wild rabbits. On the east side, there are sheep populations infected with a type of pneumonia called mycoplasma ovipneumoniae — “movi” for short — which come from domestic sheep and goats. 

“That’s kind of the two main disease issues we have at the moment,” Clarke said. “Both of these two diseases are human-introduced, unfortunately.”

There are nearly 40 sheep — a mix of ewes (female sheep) and their lambs — housed at the sheep pen on PIB land, all infected with mange at varying severities.

The disease is characterized by tiny mites that live on the sheep’s skin. The mites primarily infest the sheep’s ears and body, where they feed off its skin and result in scabs, inflammation, hair loss and more.

“Their hair doesn’t look very good; their skin condition isn’t very good. They get a lot of scabbing, hair loss. They get these scabs in their ears where they can’t hear very well,” Clarke said of the sheep.

“They’re kind of at risk for predation a bit more, or we’re seeing them get hit by cars, because they can’t hear very well, with all these scabs from the mange.”

Right now, the focus of the sheep pen’s research is to develop a drug for the mange, not for movi. 

They are looking for a drug — or drugs — that would offer longer periods of protection: clearing the mite infestation, and seeing how long the treatment protects them for.

“You give them the drug. After a certain time of months, you introduce some animals … that would still have mange, and you put them together with the animals that you treated. We’re trying to see how long does it take them to get mange from those animals that had it, again,” said Clarke.

“If we treat them with one drug, does it protect them for six months from getting sick again? That gives us a good estimate of how long we have to actually administer that drug out on the land for the populations.”

Led by the syilx Nation, the research project has seen the Wild Sheep Society of British Columbia step up in helping to fund the research, following provincial funding restraints announced at the end of last year. A number of provincial, regional biologists and even a mange expert from the United Kingdom are also supporting the project, which was first launched at PIB in October of last year.

“This project has been so huge, that it wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without everybody working together like they have been,” Clarke said.

“This project is a good example of everybody collaborating together for a common cause, because it’s been such a big undertaking. It shows that if we keep doing that, we can accomplish a lot more.”

Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Minister Randene Neill visited the territory and toured the sheep pen site in July. 

During the visit, Minister Neill observed the sheep feeding at the pen, which is a large, open, fenced-off area located on a hillside above the PIB community — not far from the animals’ natural habitat. Joining her were PIB Chief Greg Gabriel, ONA staff and members of the Wild Sheep Society. 

The sheep were timid during the visit — any movement from humans startled them and interrupted their feeding time. They ran up and down the sloping hill, going between their sheltering quarters and the feeding site. 

“It was good for (Minister Neill) to come out and see that everybody is trying to work together on something like this — provincial staff; all the NGOs; the bands; ONA,” said Clarke.

“It’s a really good example of a collaborative project and how we can try and get more done if we’re all doing it together.”

As reported by The Narwhal last September, the ministry had cut funding to provincial wildlife and biodiversity programs, which included the bighorn sheep disease monitoring in the Okanagan region.

The ONA acknowledged the funding woes, saying they “certainly will not allow a lack of provincial support to ‘cancel’ the bighorn programs.” 

“These circumstances, in the ONA’s view, only add pressure to B.C. to advance co-management agreements, and acknowledge and recognize the syilx Okanagan Nation’s responsibilities for wildlife,” ONA said in a statement released shortly after the budget constraints were revealed.

Jordan Coble, the chairman for ONA’s Natural Resource Committee, said in the same statement that bighorn sheep are “a relative with whom we have shared tmx?ulax? (land) and resources for thousands of years.”

“There is an inextinguishable responsibility to care for the land and the tmixw (all living creatures), including bighorn sheep,” Coble said.

The sheep are found in mixed areas throughout the Okanagan, Clarke said, particularly in steeper, cliff areas in the southern-part of the territory.

“They usually like areas that are close to escape terrains, so areas close to a steep area where they can run away,” Clarke said.

Though once an important food source, Clarke said that syilx Nation members rarely hunt and harvest the sheep anymore, because of diseases and the population’s fragility.

She said that “it’s a concern” that nation members can no longer have access to harvesting sheep like they historically used to.

“There’s concern of the health of the land and the ecosystem — usually when the animals are sick, that means that there’s a larger issue going on as well,” said Clarke.

Clinical trials

The clinical trials began in February, and are building on the work of a similar clinical drug trial for mange that began in 2016 and concluded one year later.

That first trial found success in trying different drugs, Clarke said, noting that a tagged sheep who had been administered treatment and released back into the wild was later found to have their ears and coat in much better condition.

“We haven’t been able to examine that on a more research scale, but visually looking at it, they seemed in better condition. There does seem like there is some sort of residual effect from the drug from years ago,” she said.

“They did find some success with that trial, which is good. They just kind of ran out of time.”

In this set of clinical trials, there are two different drugs being tested, as well as a combination of the two, she said.

“I think we have a pretty good chance of actually finding something that’ll work,” said Clarke.

“Whichever one works, we’ll give it to all of the sheep again, and we’ll let them all go back where they came from.”

The reason why research into treating the mange is the focus instead of the movi is because “if one sheep has (the mange), they all have it,” she said.

“With the pneumonia, the only thing you can really do is called a test and remove,” she said, which is the process of testing the sheep and removing them from the herd if their results come back positive.

“Unfortunately, since some of them are carriers, you have to remove them from the population. If those ones are removed, there’s no one to really spread it around anymore,” she said.

Once a treatment for the mange is found, Clarke said the focus will be finding a treatment for the movi.

“With the pneumonia, we know where it is. We’re just leaving it alone right now,” she said.

While the disease movement is somewhat slow, Clarke said that researchers are finding a treatment for mange now to avoid having the sheep get infected with both diseases at the same time in the future.

“I think it would hit their population pretty hard,” she said.  “I’ve talked to some biologists down in the states, and they’ve seen that when they have the movi and the mange at the same time, they had some really large die-offs in their sheep.”

Clarke said that researchers want to have a mange drug ready when more tests and removes are conducted in the future.

“So that we can give every sheep the mange drug anyways, just so that we’re saving the most amount of time and money that we can,” she said. “We’ll just try and treat both diseases at the same time.”

There’s also the concern of the Okanagan sheep infected with the mange transferring the disease to herd populations in the “United States” as they migrate, although Clarke noted that there are herds there who are already infected with the mange.

“It’s good if we figure out a drug, because other people can also use it as well in other places,” she said. “That’s been another big push for us to do this, so that other people can also use our research.” 

Bringing sheep home after numbers were depleted

According to the province, the mange is believed to be partially responsible for historic declines in bighorn sheep populations in the western “United States” in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

“It is still present, to varying degrees, in some U.S. bighorn populations,” the province states. 

“We do not know how this disease came to the south Okanagan bighorns.”

Before the mass-infestations in the Okanagan, many of the sheep in the territory had been the source of sheep reintroductions in the “U.S.”

Recently, Clarke said that ONA has been contacted about bringing some of those sheep back home to the Okanagan.

“Some of those populations have been doing so well that they actually have too many sheep. They were wondering if we wanted sheep back,” she said.

“That’s something we’re starting to work on, is bringing the sheep home. We’re trying to coordinate with Oregon and Utah, to see if we can move some sheep back to the Okanagan.”

With sheep populations in the Okanagan having their numbers depleted due to diseases, Clarke said that it would be beneficial to bring the sheep back, once better disease treatments are in place.

In the future, the hope is to have a dedicated sheep program within the syilx Nation — for monitoring, disease work and habitat work.

“That’s another reason why we’re trying to figure this stuff out right now,” she said.

— This story was originally published by IndigiNews

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