Peek in on a health check for a lioness chosen to repopulate the Zambezi Delta ecosystem. With luck, she will be pregnant with the next generation of predators!
About Defenders of the Wild: Join conservationist Ivan Carter as he seeks solutions to create a balanced wildlife ecosystem! Experts join Carter to spotlight the conservation efforts happening worldwide. Ready! Set! Adventure!
This clip comes from Season 1, Episode 3: "Bighorn Sheep: Banging Heads!"
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00:00Throughout history, bighorn sheep have played a prominent role in the indigenous Lakota culture.
00:07Their ability to survive in the most inhospitable environments meant that many native cultures saw the bighorn sheep as a food source.
00:15The animals were considered sacred.
00:23And so traditionally you were telling me the sheep were really quite important to the tribe.
00:28Yeah, they actually made things like utensils and they would use it for the strength of their bows.
00:34It was important as a food source as well as the harder parts to make things.
00:39To make tools, yeah.
00:40Meeting Richard and understanding from him what it meant to the tribe to have one of their most iconic species disappear.
00:48That's a giant deal right there.
00:54About how many are out there at the moment?
00:56During the rutting season when the males start coming out all over to consort with the females out there that stay their year-round.
01:03I've never seen more than maybe 75.
01:06Oh wow.
01:07Yeah.
01:08Oh wow, so it's quite a low population still.
01:09It is, yeah.
01:10But they come and go.
01:11I mean, they're just like elk.
01:12They travel back and forth.
01:13They move quite a bit, eh?
01:14Yeah.
01:17And hopefully there's going to be days again where they're going to number back into their hundreds and thousands, you know?
01:21I'm hoping so, yeah.
01:22I mean, there's room for them out there.
01:27Translocations are a very, very important part of conservation and there's two main reasons for a translocation.
01:33Usually taking animals from an area where they're adequately populated and augmenting a population where the number of that species is too low and they need a bit of help to recover and get to critical mass where they can grow.
01:46The second and the most exciting reason for translocating is reestablishing a brand new population in an ecosystem that hasn't had any for a while.
