UI investigating researcher over bighorn study

The University of Idaho has opened an investigation into whether the head of its Caine Veterinary Teaching and Research Center suppressed information from a 1994 study that appears to show bighorn sheep can get deadly diseases directly from domestic sheep on the open range. The center's leader, Marie Bulgin, is a past president of the Idaho Wool Growers Association who has testified before Idaho lawmakers and in federal court that there is no evidence of such disease transmission. Disease transmission between bighorns and domestic sheep is a sore subject in Idaho, where Payette National Forest managers are considering reducing domestic sheep grazing allotments near Hell's Canyon to protect bighorns reintroduced there in 1971. Ranchers are fighting the proposed reductions in federal court. Bulgin has said there may be other factors, including stress, that result in bighorn sheep die-offs, such as ones where 300 sheep died in 1995 and 1996 in Hell's Canyon. Idaho bighorn numbers have dwindled by half since 1990, to about 3,500 animals. In interviews with The Associated Press and others, Bulgin said she was unaware of the 1994 study conducted by Caine center scientists on two dead bighorns that showed a possible link. The research never resulted in a paper being published...Olympian