No doubt the Aoudads don’t understand how they’ve worn out their “welcome” in their new homes on the North American continent. They just want to live, which means aggressive grazing for them, [Courtesy image from  https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/09/texas-hunting-sheep-helicopter/

By Dan Bodine

Remember back around 2007 when Texas Parks & Wildlife dropped the hammer on feral burros in Big Bend State Park near Presidio, in Far West Texas, permitting killing ’em from the air? Now, think of exotic sheep instead, the Aoudads.

But innocent burros, it was then … With forbearer lineage even to one that once carried the King of Kings a couple thousand years ago … was a pill too hard to swallow for the public. There was a righteous uproar of concerned citizens then over it, yes.

But everything was all settled humanely, and peacefully, when the State agreed to foster out the animals to kids wanting them as pets. On both sides, we all felt better about ourselves and our humanity, no?

Well … It’s been a while, yes, but…..Now, expanding their numbers territory into another state (and even down into Mexico some), it’s about these pesky Aoudad sheep.

Also known as Barbary sheep, they were imported to similar locales in North America from their homes in Africa, starting in the ’40s and ’50s.

Maybe somebody’s wife or kid had thought they were cute then, and wanted one as a pet! And thus became another Great Migration.

But once the enamel wore off of the novelty of that deal, those animals, and their offsprings somehow, then became a new lane for sporting — e.g., for salivating mano Americanos.

Obviously, there’d been a miscue then on how quickly these animals populate an area. So when push comes to shove with us, put the damn hammer down on the problem! Grease and morbidity then! The American Way!

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The Aoudads are beautiful hunting animals, yes. But I still think it’s cheap to gun ’em down casually from a chopper, same as the donkeys. Something‘s removed from sporting, that way.

That is, the playing field’s not leveled enough for most sporters’ consciousnesses, say. [And that’s a stretch, yes. I remember a group inserting the Yosemite Mafia in the Big Bend case, i.e.!)

Concern has spiked now, yes, about these sheep because, foremost, it seems Aoudads are more aggressive grazers than other animals there.

They’ve just developed a higher grub efficiency, say. And now these states are in cahoots wanting to punish ’em for it!

Two, their growing population. Let’s just say they multiply like jackrabbits use to, before we stole all their habitats, e.g.! Remember those days? (Capitalism’s greedy overbuilding impulse, and the subsequent tax revenues, became the North Star of the show!)

And now, these Aoudads’ breeding numbers are upsetting the ecosystems, too, wouldn’t ya’ know? E.g., because in Northern Mexico, Far West Texas, and Southwest New Mexico, there are beaucoup other foragers scrambling for the same bits of grass also. On the same land. And sorely loosing out. Sadly, it is, yes.

But if the purpose of these designated spaces is to protect species, how do you do it for one and not for all though, huh?

Me, I’d send these high-class sheep, instead, to Chile, or to a country that might be seeking a less expensive way of controlling desert plant growth!

And have taxpayers here eat the loss. For  initially putting wrong-headedness in the driver’s seat! Would that not help a long-term research problem?

And a Foreign Relations gift, this would be, too, no!? Hallaluhja! Sanity disguised as benevolence to the rescue! What an idea!

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But yeah, too, this killin’ the defenseless from the air, snarkily, just goes on and on it seems with us. It’s our go-to!

Maybe that’s one of the many reasons for the well overused, old saying, We live in an imperfect world. Our unbridled, deep-seated mores to make a buck somehow overpowers our common compassion in some issue.

Despite all we do to the contrary — mui poquito snarkily, maybe — to make it seem the best!

We step in it.

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