A decades old problem is getting a more modern take on prevention as managers of the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole have taken to digital signage to try and keep motorists moving.

The problem? Bighorn sheep licking the vehicles for it’s salty taste and causing a potential danger on the highway.

Drivers on U.S. Highway 89 may come across them as they travel north of Jackson Hole as the signs encourage them to keep moving and slowly avoid the salt-thirsty horde of sheep near the roadside.

“They’ve been doing that for years,” said Wyoming Game & Fish Biologist Gary Fralick. “They are after that salt. Much like the goats lick the sodium solution on the road that WYDOT puts down in the Snake River Canyon, there is some remnant of sodium salt solution on the sides of the vehicles.”

Authorities are hoping to keep the traffic moving to the point where the sheep stop coming to area vehicles looking for the salty payoff. According to Fralick, the sheep will lick Game & Fish vehicles as well and can cause some puzzling discussions for visitors as they return to their cars in the area pullouts.

“It’s really strange to look at and there are some vehicles that have hundreds of little tongue marks and they don’t know what they are,” he said.

The sheep are mainly congregating in the area of Miller Butte where Fralick thinks that perhaps a lack of sodium in their natural habitat combined with the ease of access on the highway have driven the sheep to their slobbery habit.

“It’s more readily accessible perhaps,” he stated. “As opposed to staying up in the mountains and having a lot of their habitat covered with snow.”

Fralick also hoped that the larger Bighorn Mountain Goats don’t get the same ideas.
“I hope the goats never learn that,” he said. “That would be a different outcome.”

(Photo provided by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)