Can Idaho manage wild and domestic sheep together?

Riggins rancher Mick Carlson had come to know the aging wild bighorn with a full curled rack that shared the Salmon River canyon with his bands of domestic sheep.

The 7-year-old ram's coat had lightened like the graying of an old dog when Carlson last saw him upriver in late March. But on May 18, when the ram showed up on the rocky bluff above Carlson's sheep pasture, the bighorn was showing more than his age.

He was coughing, sneezing and clearly ill. He appeared to have pneumonia caused by a bacteria that one study showed had been transmitted to bighorns from domestic sheep - and killed an entire herd.

This was what sheep ranchers and bighorn advocates had fiercely debated in the Idaho Legislature this winter. Can bighorn sheep coexist with domestic sheep?

Just a week before the old ram appeared on that ridge, Gov. Butch Otter had signed a bill aimed at keeping domestic sheep and wild bighorns apart to prevent the spread of disease.

But the solution wasn't to move domestic sheep off public bighorn range. Instead, it relied on ranchers and officials to keep the wild sheep away from the flocks encroaching on traditional wild sheep habitat.

The ram's visit to Carlson's ranch shows "even with a collared animal they couldn't prevent this," said John Robison, Idaho Conservation League's associate director.

WHEN THEY WANDER TOO CLOSE

The ram, which was radio-collared in March 2008, was known to biologists with the Nez Perce Tribe as R14.

When R14 showed up on Carlson's land, he called an official with the Idaho Woolgrowers Association, who called officials with Idaho Fish and Game.

Under the new law, a wild sheep that had come this close to a domestic herd had to be either relocated or killed.

But as sick as R14 was, he escaped state and tribal authorities and rejoined his group of 11 rams that live a few miles upriver from Carlson's ranch. He's still loose, and his story has become the latest cautionary tale in the controversy over the future of bighorn sheep and domestic sheep ranching in Idaho.

No one saw R14 closer than 50 to 75 feet from Carlson's sheep. And no one really knows what ails the ram or whether he has carried a deadly disease back to his companions. But the story has the Wild Sheep Foundation, hunters who have worked to restore bighorns, worried that it's watching its worst fears play out.

"You could have a die-off of a core population that could become threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and the federal government would manage bighorns, not the state," said Neil Thagart, Wild Sheep Foundation chief operating officer. "That won't be good for anyone."

For Carlson, a 72-year-old third-generation rancher, the incident provides a new frustration: following a court defeat, the reduced use of public land and the threat he might lose all grazing on the federal lands surrounding his 6,000-acre ranch.

"We are kind of disgusted with this because we become the bad guys," Carlson said.

IS IT REALLY THE BEST MANAGEMENT?

Fish and Game officials say Carlson did the right thing by getting in touch with them right away. He is one of 15 sheep ranchers working with Fish and Game under the new law to develop plans to separate domestic sheep from bighorns.

Ranchers will use extra herders, guard dogs and other "best management practices" to keep bighorns away from sheep. But if contact is made - and in some cases that means coming within 100 yards of each other - then the new Idaho law requires the bighorn to be moved or killed.

"They are going to promote separation, and some will be harder to do than others," said Jim Unsworth, Fish and Game deputy director.

The plans have to be done by Aug. 5. Then Fish and Game Director Cal Groen will have to certify whether the plans are likely to work. That certification will be taken into account by the Payette National Forest, which is in its own process to decide whether to continue to allow sheep ranchers to graze their sheep in bighorn habitat.

Whatever forest officials decide, the issue likely will return to court, where a judge will have to decide whether domestic sheep and bighorn are compatible. The numbers of both animals have dropped significantly.

In 1918, Idaho had 2.6 million domestic sheep. Today only 178,000 are left, grazed by a shrinking number of ranchers.

Experts estimate there were more than 2 million bighorn sheep in the American West in the 1800s, but by the early 20th century bighorn populations had dropped to 15,000.

Through conservation, the number has risen to 70,000 across the region. But Idaho's numbers have been steadily dropping since the 1980s.

The Salmon River herd has about 100 animals, said Nez Perce biologist Curt Mack - a drop of 76 percent since the 1980s. Once a population drops below 120 animals, it's hard to recover the population without reintroducing animals from elsewhere.

"We're getting really close to that tipping point right now," Mack said.

HOW DO YOU KEEP THE SHEEP APART?

The major problem for the Salmon River herd and many of Idaho's bighorn is disease.

For years, wildlife managers have pointed to the transmission of a bacteria called pasteurella, which causes pneumonia in both domestic and wild sheep.

Over centuries, domestic sheep have developed a resistance to the disease, but wild sheep have not.

Lawmakers passed their legislation this session based on testimony by Marie Bulgin, a veterinarian with the University of Idaho, who said there were no documented cases of domestic sheep transmitting the bacteria to bighorns in the wild.

A 2008 peer-reviewed study by Colorado Division of Wildlife scientists led by Janet George showed that a die-off of more than 86 bighorns from 1997 to 2000 was caused when one domestic sheep wandered onto a bighorn range. It confirmed what other studies have inferred.

And just this weekend, it came out that Bulgin's own center had conducted tests that indicated the disease could be transmitted from domestic to wild sheep - though she said the study happened before she took the job in 2003 and she didn't know about it until this year.

Still, scientists don't know how the disease is transmitted, what factors contribute to transmission and how much transmission of other bacteria even from other bighorns contributes to the die-offs that have killed off large numbers of wild sheep.

Idaho's problem is a West-wide problem, said the Wild Sheep Foundation's Thagart.

The extra herders, guard dogs and other techniques that the new Idaho law requires work the best in areas where domestic and wild animals aren't living on top of each other - like they are around Carlson's ranch and other places, including Hells Canyon.

Even under those easier circumstances, preventing contact is extremely difficult.

Vic Coggins, a biologist in Oregon, has been working with bighorns and domestic sheep since 1971. He has tried all kinds of measures to keep the two animals apart.

Instructions were given to herders in Spanish and guard dogs were used in a recent effort on the Umatilla National Forest near Elgin. But even with a cooperative sheep rancher, two sheep strayed into bighorn territory anyway.

"Best management practices are not going to keep them separated," Coggins said. "It's not sure enough, and the disease consequence of contact between the two is so great, I don't think it's going to work at all."

Carlson said he has "stood on every rock and walked up every draw" of the ranch and surrounding public grazing land his family has used for decades, and he's not about to give up.

"Actually, we've had separation for 80 years and I don't see much change," Carlson said. "If they want a guarantee, 100 percent separation, that's pretty hard to come by."

ABANDONING COMMON GROUND

Gov. Butch Otter sought to find common ground in 2008 when he appointed an advisory committee that included all of the major players - ranchers, American Indian tribes, hunters and environmentalists. But the passage of this year's bill made several members, including the Nez Perce Tribe, doubtful a collaborative effort was going to go anywhere.

Soon after Otter signed the bighorn bill, Fish and Game and Department of Agriculture officials postponed future meetings until after they finished the separation plans. The Nez Perce Tribe and the Idaho Conservation League have already pulled out.

But another collaboration, formed in August 2008 by the American Sheep Institute, the Nez Perce Tribe and the Wild Sheep Foundation, convened by Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo, is still going strong.

This group is focused on the Payette National Forest and its review of sheep grazing in bighorn habitat. It has three main principles, said Margaret Soulen-Hinson, whose family grazes sheep on the Payette.

"We took the issue of disease transmission off the table," she said. "We agreed it can happen.

"We agreed we wanted healthy bighorn populations and we wanted healthy domestic sheep operations, and we didn't want to be in court."

In the short term, the collaborative partners have helped get money to monitor and scientifically test "best management practices" this season. In the longer term, they are seeking alternative grazing lands for the ranchers who are now grazing in bighorn habitat, and who are targeted to lose that privilege if the Forest Service changes the rules.

"The tribe has experienced the trauma associated with the experience of being torn from the land it loves, uprooted and resettled," said Sam Penney, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. "We would not wish that experience on anyone."

The collaborative group also is seeking federal funds with Washington State University scientists to determine whether vaccines can be developed that either prevent domestic sheep from shedding bacteria or make bighorns more resident to disease.

"What we want to achieve is compatibility," said Don Knowles, a WSU veterinary professor and specialist in infectious diseases.

But that may not come in time for Mick Carlson. The Forest Service could stop him from grazing on both the Nez Perce and Payette national forests. The disease issue may give Western Watersheds Project, a group that opposes public lands grazing, the grounds to push him off Bureau of Land Management lands as well.

"They just want to put me out of business," Carlson said.

Rocky Barker: 377-6484