Bighorn Airlift

Nevada's Pyramid Lake is an ancient natural lake fed by the Truckee River that transports water from Lake Tahoe down the eastern face of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  The Northern Paiute Tribe was squeezed onto the Pyramid Lake reservation in the 19th century, although the Paiutes had lived in the Great Basin and ranged between the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains for hundreds of years.  

Pyramid Lake provided the Paiutes with fish, the cui-ui and Lahontan cutthroat trout, both struggling, but on the rebound due to the tribe's conservation efforts.  However, bighorn sheep that were a critical part of the tribe's culture had been missing from the reservation for a century.  Until now.

For the first time in roughly a hundred years, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe will have a flock of bighorn sheep on tribal land that was once a part of the sheep’s historic habitat. Not only will the effort help restore the species; it will also renew hunting and tanning traditions and support ceremonial uses — practices disrupted as the sheep population declined.