What Sheep and Goat Owners Can Do To Help WA Big Horn Sheep Herds.

As more people opt to live in remote locations it is putting our state's Big Horn sheep Big Horn sheep herds in risk. Here’s Laura Heinse who did her postdoctoral research at WSU on our state’s Big Horn sheep.

 

There is a lot of concern right now about sheep grazing on big allotments in the National Forest land, that a hot topic. We identified that there is an also lot of sheep and goat owners living around Big Horn sheep on small private land and larger private land. What I got to do was work with these landowners and see what they would be interested in doing to basically help prevent their sheep and goats from coming in contact with big horn sheep

Domestic sheep and goats can pass deadly pneumonia a to the wild Big Horn herds

Yea it’s pretty serious, Yakima and Hells Canyons have both had pretty terrible outbreaks they can use 70 % of the herd, as a rough estimate. And then the moms can continue to pass it on to the lambs so unfortunately the Big Horn sheep keep losing their lamb crop every few years, they have a really hard time recovering from it.

Did you feel like you made a difference creating awareness for this issue?

Yea it was really rewarding, the most rewarding were that everyone was interested in helping.