Martinez family's sheep dynasty imperiled

Because his family business is raising and grazing sheep, though, the heavy load in his truck bed doesn't look like your basic Wray's run: seven military-style, five-gallon water drums, a wall of rock salt bags and a seemingly endless supply of dog food in 50-pound bags that, he says, "we buy by the pallet." Providing for his Peruvian sheepherder, this "band" of roughly 700 ewes and 1,000 lambs, and the numerous dogs that both protect and herd the sheep, is the easy part of Martinez's job. Far more difficult are the problems that may lie ahead. While nearly every other free-range sheep ranching operation in the state closed up shop 20 years ago, the Martinezes have survived nearly nine decades of changes in the marketplace and the political arena. They have done so despite losing vast swaths of grazing land to such federal projects as the Hanford nuclear reservation and the Yakima Training Center. But now they must distance themselves -- and their domestic sheep, quite literally -- from the wild California bighorn sheep not too far across these Cascade foothills, a complication that didn't exist even two decades ago...more