(CNN) The crowd gathered for the bighorn sheep sendoff in Nevada far outnumbered the 21 animals who galloped out of their pens and into their new habitat. But the small number of sheep could be instrumental in securing the species' future.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe teamed up to release the desert bighorn sheep into the hills of Pyramid Lake, near the west Nevada-California border, last week. The animals haven't lived in that part of Nevada in 100 years, wildlife experts said.

Desert bighorn sheep, Nevada's state animal, once populated the state in the tens of thousands. But with Western settlement, their populations shrunk with excessive hunting and human encroachment.

They were virtually eradicated from Pyramid Lake in the top of the 20th century.

That was until bighorn sheep conservationist Larry Johnson hatched a plan for the species' restoration. He proposed it to the Paiute Tribe and the Department of Wildlife. Now, more than one year later, he watched their reintroduction to the land they hadn't known for nearly a century.

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