Science confirms what visitors intuit: Big Bend National Park is a singular place. At 1,200 square miles, it's the largest protected Chihuahuan Desert landscape in the U.S. The diversity of desert life it contains is unparalleled. It's not only a place of recreation – the park exists to preserve ecosystems.

That work falls to the park service, and it's not always simple. “Exotic” or non-native species are among the the starkest of challenges.

In 2018, the park adopted new plans for addressing “exotics.” They include ambitious efforts to eradicate or reduce two non-native mammals – aoudad, or Barbary sheep, and feral hogs.

Watching a herd of aoudad stream effortlessly u... Hosted by for KRTS