Lone Dall sheep puzzles biologists

FAIRBANKS - A lone Dall sheep that has been hanging around the Fort Knox gold mine north of Fairbanks has wildlife biologists puzzled.

They want to know where it came from and why it's still hanging around the mine.

Biologist Tom Seaton with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks said the sheep is a long way from the steep mountain cliffs that Dall sheep typically inhabit.

The sheep showed up at the mine, about 25 miles northeast of Fairbanks, sometime in June or July, according to Delbert Parr, environmental manager for Fort Knox.

"The last report I had of it being on the site was about a week ago so it still is hanging around," Parr said Friday. "It obviously likes what it has found."

Biologists say it's possible the sheep came from the White Mountain herd to the north, or the Tanana-Yukon herds to the south.

"It's either a ewe or a young ram," Seaton said after seeing photos of the animal.

Finding food shouldn't be a problem around the mine, he said. "All they need is some grasses, and there's a lot of that at the mine because of the disturbed habitat at Fort Knox," Seaton said.

There also aren't a lot of predators such as wolves or bears hanging around the mine because of all the human activity, he said.

Tom Taylor, a field mechanic for Caterpillar in Fairbanks, was at the mine working on equipment early last month when he spotted the sheep and snapped some photos on his cell phone.

"It was just grazing around," Taylor said. "It was cool."

Seaton said the sheep would have had to travel at least 30 miles from the White Mountains to reach the mine and twice that to get there from the Tanana-Yukon uplands.

"It could have come down across Far Mountain and across Chena Dome and made it to Fort Knox pretty easily," the biologist said. "Single sheep do make forays like that."