Gov. Butch Otter must decide this week whether to sign a bill that would require the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to kill or remove bighorn sheep from public land where domestic sheep graze.

Signing Senate Bill 1175 will undercut a collaborative process he set up under the auspices of Fish and Game and the Idaho Department of Agriculture. And a House leader who supports the bill acknowledges it will play into the hands of activists who want to force sheep ranchers off public lands.

But lawmakers are so mad they can't help themselves.

The Idaho Legislature passed the bill with huge majorities because many members think Ron Shirts of Weiser and his family were treated unfairly when a 1997 agreement over transplanting bighorn sheep to Hells Canyon was overruled by a federal court. A federal judge ordered the Shirts to remove their domestic sheep from Smith Mountain in the Payette National Forest to prevent them from passing disease to bighorns.

House Assistant Majority Leader Scott Bedke, a cattle rancher, sees the issue as the latest in a familiar, and to him disturbing, trend in which protecting an iconic species becomes a surrogate for another agenda - this time driving sheep ranchers off of public land.

He can predict the next chapter. The Payette National Forest will follow through on its proposal to close grazing allotments in Hells Canyon to protect bighorn sheep, which scientists say are threatened by disease when they come in contact with domestic sheep.

An angry rancher will demand Fish and Game remove bighorn sheep from his allotment. The only way the agency will be able to comply is to go out and shoot them. A covey of television and newspaper cameras will capture the prized bighorn sheep being shot and the story will run 24 hours a day on cable news.

Idaho will be demonized again and eventually the ranchers will lose.

Even though the bill sets up a confrontation Bedke says ranchers can't win, he says lawmakers have to take a stand.

He also wants conservationists to acknowledge that they use species like bighorns as a surrogate to carry out their agenda.

Jon Marvel, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, is happy to oblige.

Marvel passionately believes that the best way to protect the habitat of wild bighorn sheep, sage grouse, salmon and the other species he cares about is to help economics push ranchers off public lands. And right now the people who are helping him the most are ranching members of the Idaho's Legislature, he said.

Marvel resents being singled out as the voice of thousands of people in and out of Idaho who share his goals and love of native species and places. That's because his open disdain for ranchers, and especially the cowboy culture, undercuts the power of his cause.

But the bighorn bill and others like it easily overcome his public persona.

"The legislature is creating a trap for ranchers and the state as a whole," Marvel said. "The state will begin to lose sovereignty over wildlife."

The Idaho Conservation League sought to convince lawmakers to work with groups like it that are willing to talk and are not against responsible public lands grazing. But Bedke and others see them as too close to Marvel and Western Watersheds, which taps many of the same people for members.

If Otter signs the bill, John Robison, public lands director, said the conservation league, sportsmen and others will likely walk out of Otter's collaborative.

Bedke said he realizes the position Robison and the conservation league are in and he wants to find a way to work with them. But he voted to pass the bill anyway.

"I think having the Idaho Conservation League and others like them offers the best hope of maintaining the multiple-use system, and I for one am willing to work with them to accomplish this," Bedke said.

Rocky Barker: 377-6484