Mouflon the "Systema Naturæ", Linnaeus and Gmelin treated the mouflon and argali as one species. Von Schreiber used the combination "Ovis aries musimon" as early as 1782. In 1792, Robert Kerr listed the "Corsican argali" as a separate variety of argali ("Ovis Ammon europaea"), writing I have introduced this variety on the authority of Mr Pennant, who distinguishes between the Argali of Corsica and the Siberian, though the difference seems chiefly in colour ; one specimen brought from that island by the famous Paoli, differed from the above in colour, having a large white spot on the front of the neck,
European mouflon 800. In Sardinia, the numbers in 1955 were around 700, but in 1967 this had fallen to just 300. Through protection programmes, the population rose however to over 1,000 in 1980. In 2015 there were an estimated 6,000 mouflon in Sardinia. The relatively low numbers in Corsica contrast with the rest of the current range of the mouflon. Today the largest numbers live in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Austria and there are still large populations in France, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria. In the introduced populations of Central Europe it is estimated that there are over 60,000 mouflon