01/03/08 Bighorn dilemma

Can domestic sheep cause Bighorn sheep to die? Some people think so. I'm Jeff Keane; I'll be back in one minute with some comments. I thought Jon Marvel and his cohorts of the Western Watersheds Project only hated cattle, but it turns out they will use any perceived excuse to curtail grazing of any domestic livestock on national forest lands. In February 2007 this group of radical environmentalists filed a complaint against the U.S. Forest Service to keep domestic sheep from its traditional grazing allotments on the Payette National Forest in Idaho. The WWP based this complaint on an analysis of bighorn sheep die-off requested by the Forest Service. The problem with the analysis is that only bighorn sheep biologist prepared the report with no input from any actual research scientists or domestic sheep experts. The consensus of the biologists was that domestic sheep could cause a bighorn die-off. The bighorns in question were transplants from Oregon arriving on 11 separate occasions over 36 years and would have had to swim the Snake River to have contact with the domestic sheep being accused as the culprits. Well, that's close enough for the Western Watersheds Project groupies and if domestic sheep are removed from public lands then good and if that destroys the Idaho sheep industry then great. Tomorrow I'll tell you some of the real research being carried out studying the bighorn die-off dilemma. I'm Jeff Keane. Range Magazine Winter 2007