The remarkable story of the Himalayan Snow Partridge in Nevada

A Himalayan Snowcock (Tetraogallus himalayensis) in the Ruby Mountains in Nevada. Picture from www.BackpackingintheRubyMountains.com

Via the American Birding Association comes a remarkable, ancient, video about the introduction of the Himalayan Snow Partridge (as the film refers to it, although the actual species is the Himalayan Snowcock) into the mountains of Nevada by the Nevada Fish and Game Commission's Exotic Game Bird Introduction program, a sustained effort to populate what they thought were "game-deficient" areas of the state. Astonishing to a modern conservation biologist to see how cavalier, nay gung-ho, government agencies were about moving species around in those days (the snowcock was brought over in the 1960s), well before introduced/invasive species became bêtes noire for conservationists. But that program was successful and there is now a small but established population of these snowcocks in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada! Check out the video on the ABA website.