This species occurs in rocky, mountainous areas, above 1,700 m asl in the Putoran Plato, and above 2,000 m asl in the rest of its range. It is generally non-migratory, but it makes seasonal short distance movements. At the beginning of spring pregnant females leave herds and in late May and June they give birth to a single young. In June herds the regroup. The old males form small groups and live separately until late autumn, while remaining animals form mixed herds. Mating is in November – December, after that during whole winter snow sheep stay in mixed groups (15 – 20 individuals). Their diet consists primarily of grasses, but also of lichens, mosses, and willow sprouts. Females are sexually mature at 2 years, while males are not until age 5. Mating is reported to occur in December with lambs born in late June (Hayssen et al. 1993). Baskin (1985) reports that their maximum lifespan is much longer than that of other wild Ovis.

This species is found in Russia, where they occur in the Putorana Mountains, north central Siberia, northeast Siberia from Lena River east to Chukotka and Kamchatka (Baskin 1985, Grubb, 2005, Pavlinov et al 2002).

The snow sheep is distributed throughout most of the mountain regions of eastern Siberia (Russia). The main distribution area begins just east of the Lena River and stretches as far as the Tenkany mountains on the Chukotsk peninsula on the western edge of the Bering Strait (Pavlinov et al 2002). This sheep also occurs in the volcanic mountains running down the Kamchatka peninsula, and the southern limit of the species appears to be in the Yablonovoi Range, south of the Lena River (Pavlinov et al 2002, Bunch et al. 2006). In addition, a totally isolated population, referred to Putoran snow sheep (O. n. borealis) is restricted to the Putoran Mountains south of the Tamyr peninsula (about 66° to 70°N and 92° to 98°E), east of the Yenisey River, and separated from the nearest Yakutian population by about 1,000 km (Sipko et al. 1999, Pavlinov et al 2002).

The Kamchatka sheep (O. n. nivicola) was listed as Category III in the Russian Red Data Book (Ivanenko, 1999 ). Despite this, some have been hunted recently by foreign trophy hunters. Sheep in the Koryak and Chukchi ranges are listed under O. n. koriakum as Category II in the Russian Red Data Book (1983). The other subspecies are considered as game animals and a limited number of licenses are being sold in Yakutia and Kamchatka, many to foreign hunters. Approximately 1,300 Putoran sheep are protected in the Putoran Reserve, about 600 of the Kamchatka subspecies occur in Kronotsky Reserve, while for Okhotsk sheep, about 1,700 are protected in the Magadan Reserve and 1,200 in Dzhugdzhur Reserve. Conservation measures proposed: 1) Establish the several reserves for conservation of the Yakutian subspecies in the Tuora-Siz range (Lower Lena river) and in the Chersky range. Reserves would also be valuable in Chukotsk, Koryak Uplands and’in Kamchatka for the conservation of their respective populations. 2) Undertake censuses of numbers to verify distributions and population estimates. At the same time, 3) the taxonomy of snow sheep subspecies and their respective distributions requires clarification (Weinberg et al., 1997).