(Photo courtesy of Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs)
The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs were honored for their decades-long efforts in restoring bighorn sheep populations at the Wild Sheep Foundation’s annual Sheep Show last month.
The Tribes received the Wild Sheep Foundation’s Federal Statesman Award, which recognizes government agencies that have made outstanding contributions to wild sheep restoration. The Tribes are among only 24 award winners honored by the Foundation within the last 40 years.
Hunter Timothy Haught, the successful 2024 bid winner $230,000 permit from the Tribe and received the 2026 North American Wild Sheep Gold Award for a successful bighorn sheep hunt with a 177 5/8 Boone & Crockett Score. Proceeds from his hunt, along with funds from 2025, permit sales, support habitat restoration, invasive species removal, and watershed projects on the Reservation. In addition, the Wild Sheep Foundation auctioned the Tribes’ third annual permit for $250,000 at the 2026 Wild Sheep Show, bringing the total conservation funding from 2024 to 2026 to $760,000 for supporting wild sheep and other wildlife habitat restoration on tribal lands.
Not only will this contribution of funds be reinvested in sheep management and habitat, but it will also make the tribes eligible to apply for the Wild Sheep Foundation’s Grant-In-Aid program, which provides funding for projects that further enhance wildlife restoration efforts.
“All of our restoration efforts are in pursuit of achieving one goal: returning fauna and fish populations to their historic levels,” said Austin Smith Jr, general manager of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Brand of Natural Resources. “We appreciate the Wild Sheep Foundation’s recognition of these efforts and will continue to collaborate to restore bighorn sheep populations throughout our lands.”
Throughout its nearly 40 year history, the Wild Sheep Foundation has invested over $145 million to support the restoration of wild sheep populations across North America. Collaborating with local affiliates, Tribes, government agencies and nonprofit organizations, the Foundation has helped to triple wild sheep populations over these past few decades.
Along with their receipt of the Federal Statesman and the North American Wild Sheep Awards, Warm Springs Tribal Wildlife Biologist Camille Brooks and Warm Springs Wildlife Range and Agriculture Manager Michael Leecy presented on the success of their bighorn restoration efforts thus far. The Tribes also donated a single ram permit to the Wild Sheep Foundation, which will be auctioned at a later date to raise funds for future bighorn restoration efforts.
The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon is a federally-recognized, sovereign Indian tribe, representing the Wasco, Warm Springs and Paiute peoples. The Tribes occupy the Warm Springs Reservation, which stretches from the summits of the Cascade Mountains to the cliffs of the Deschutes River in Central Oregon. The Reservation is reserved for the Tribes’ exclusive benefit by an 1855 Treaty with the United States, which reserved to the Tribes the right to fish, hunt, gather foods and pasture livestock in the ceded lands and at usual and accustomed sites throughout the John Day, Hood River, Deschutes and Columbia Basins.
