Mountain ungulates in protected areas face welfare challenges from disease transmission, helicopter disturbance, and habitat constraints that active management can address.
Mountain ungulate welfare in protected areas is affected by both natural stressors and management interventions. Disease transmission from domestic livestock causes acute respiratory illness with high mortality rates in naive bighorn populations — individual animals experience severe pneumonia before death. Helicopter survey methods, while valuable for conservation, cause flight responses that can result in falls and injury on steep terrain. Management interventions designed to benefit populations can inadvertently harm individual welfare. Welfare-conscious management of mountain ungulates treats survey methodology choices, domestic livestock boundary enforcement, and habitat protection decisions as welfare decisions as well as conservation decisions, seeking methods that minimize individual animal distress while achieving population management objectives.