The University of Idaho has opened an inquiry into its Caine Veterinary Teaching Center in Caldwell and its controversial director Marie Bulgin - a past president of the Idaho Wool Growers Association.

An Associated Press report last weekend showed that unpublished research at the Caine Center had documented the transmission of a bacteria that causes pneumonia from a domestic sheep to wild bighorns.

But Bulgin had repeatedly testified before the Idaho Legislature and in federal court that such documentation did not exist. She was supporting a 2009 bill backed by the wool growers to keep sheep ranchers from losing federal grazing lands. The bill passed.

"The university takes seriously concerns raised by those comments and is looking into the issue," school officials said in the statement.

Bulgin told the AP she was unaware of the research, which was written into a paper in the late 1990s that was never published. Scientists involved in the study said a series of personnel issues and changed assignments kept the paper from publication, not politics.

Bulgin said Tuesday that she could not comment because of the inquiry.

One of the authors of the unpublished paper, David Hunter, a former Idaho Department of Fish and Game veterinarian, said Bulgin's assertion that she was unaware of the research is hard to believe. Bulgin's daughter, Jeanne Bulgin, is among the people acknowledged for their efforts in the research.

"Marie was a colleague of mine back then," said Hunter, now of Bozeman, Mont. "I just have trouble believing that with all the work we were doing she could not have known about that."

The new law requires Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials to move or kill bighorn sheep that come in contact with domestic sheep. The bitter political debate boiled over into the long scientific controversy over the compatibility of raising domestic sheep in bighorn habitat.

VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE

The unpublished paper discussed two different bighorn sheep, a ewe found with domestic rams in Nevada and a bighorn ram found grazing with domestic ewes in Oregon.

Both died after they were brought to the Caine Center and isolated in 1994. The same strains of the bacteria pasteurella were found in the domestic and the wild sheep in both cases.

The paper was accepted for publication in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases in 1997. But Hunter, the senior author, was leaving Idaho for his new job in Montana.

Alton Ward, one of the senior veterinarian researchers at the Caine Center who worked with Hunter, was fighting cancer during the same time period and had taken a leave of absence.

Hunter left Fish and Game veterinarian researcher Karen Rudolph to complete the extensive revisions.

She said Tuesday that at the time, she was coming off maternity leave. Later she was moved to working strictly on enforcement, and the paper came off of her to-do list, she said.

A PUBLIC CONFRONTATION

In 2003, when Ward was preparing to retire, he recalled the paper that he, Rudolph and Hunter had never finished. He put it on a list of work he and Rudolph would do after his retirement - but they were in no hurry.

The issue came to a head in a November 2007 meeting on bighorn disease issues sponsored by the Payette National Forest in McCall. Ward and others from the Caine Center were raising doubts about pasteurella transmission from domestic sheep to bighorns.

David Jessup, senior wildlife veterinarian for the California Department of Fish and Game, called Ward out, holding up the unpublished paper.

"I said, 'I don't have to prove anything. You proved it yourself at your own lab,' " Jessup said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

"In all fairness to Ward, it was not ready for publication," Jessup said. "Once confronted with it, he realized it was a major mistake and said they would go back and modify the paper and resubmit it."

Jessup said the U of I inquiry into Bulgin's statements was "long overdue."

Hunter said that until the 2007 dispute arose, he thought the research was in the public domain, even though not published and peer-reviewed. Only then did he work to get the information out himself.

"I think there's enough blame to be shared, and I'm a part of it," he said.

Ward said he has sought to avoid controversy throughout his career and especially now that he is retired. But he spoke to the Idaho Statesman Tuesday, he said, to show that there was no coverup of the data.

He and Rudolph are working to get the data published and the record cleared.

"Without solid data, circumstantial evidence is too easily seen as absolute," Ward said.

Rocky Barker: 377-6484