This issue is moving swiftly around the west. Sheep grazing in occupied bighorn habitat is being challenged in Montana now as well. The Gallatin Wildlife Association has been a strong advocate for all wildlife in the region.
Sheep on public lands drawing renewed attention
DANIEL PERSON Bozeman Daily Chronicle
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Ken Cole is a 5th generation Idahoan, an avid fly fisherman, wildlife enthusiast, and photographer. He is the interim Idaho Director for Western Watersheds Project.
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Comments
What a good quote at the end of the article! Running domestic sheep on public lands is indeed like research on typewriter technology.
The Woolgrowers are subsidized to the hilt by our tax dollars, so we are all enabling their tragic destruction of the land and native wildlife.
Am I the only one who finds it strange that people cannot produce numbers for domestic sheep dying but they can for bighorns dying? I am glad to see that Marie Bulgin has made news in another state as well.
Too bad the wool growers have such a powerful voice in politics.
Please stay tuned. Bighorn sheep are approaching the Robb-Ledford Wildlife Management Area and they may be killed because domestic sheep are allowed to trail through this WMA each spring and fall on their way to public land allotments in the Gravelly Mountains. The Montana department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks is required to consider the environmental impacts before issuing the required commercial use permit for any domestic sheep trailing through a WMA and clearly this is not a compatible use of bighorn sheep habitat. The domestic sheep trailing is the reason bighorns have been killed by government agents in the past as they attempted to naturally emigrate onto the WMA.
Geez Glenn. Don’t they have semi-trucks in Montana?
Oh – that’s right – hauling domestic sheep costs money. We wouldn’t want any welfare public lands rancher to spend money on that. Plus those domestics can’t be eating all that virtually free forage in the truck either. MUCH better to straggle out the move from Point A to Point B over the course of days – or better yet weeks …
And, too, think of the work this herding generates – for Wildlife Services that is. Wildlife Services will get to gun down and trap predators (coyotes, badgers incidentally get people’s dogs) all along the herding trail … No, no way to haul those sheep.
A rancher would never dream of moving sheep or cattle with trucks. So many believe it is their God-given right to move animals across public roads, national forests, everywhere.