Well before Nevada rancher
Cliven Bundy started a new range war for refusing to pay his federal grazing fees,
Frank Robbins
was protesting his revoked cattle grazing permits in Wyoming. He wanted
to draw attention to what he saw as unfair treatment from the BLM after
he denied the agency’s request for an easement across the ranch he
bought in 1994,
he told Livestock Weekly.
So he spent the frigid February of 2000 riding his mule Buford around
the outside of the Bureau of Land Management office in Worland, Wyoming. The long-standing conflict between Robbins and the BLM has flared up
again recently, and this time it could have dire consequences for one of
the lower 48’s largest bighorn sheep populations...So the BLM pulled all of Robbins' 14 cattle grazing leases again in
the mid-2000s, and he had to shrink his herd to what his 75,000 acre
ranch would support. The BLM did offer to return some of the cattle
leases to Robbins, but he refused the deal. Instead, a few years ago he started running domestic sheep on his
ranch. The problem is that Robbins’ ranch is smack dab in the middle of
prime habitat for 600 to 800 bighorns, and those sheep intermingle with
even more herds. It’s well established that bighorn sheep can catch
pneumonia from domestic sheep — often with fatal consequences for adults
and newborns. Robbins
recently told the
Casper Star-Tribune
that the sheep were an economic necessity after the agency rescinded
his public-land grazing permit, since sheep require less land than
cattle. But it also looks like the decision was a form of protest
against the agency. The
Star-Tribune reported that he sent the
BLM a letter in April 2012 stating, “Since you decided not to return
the permit in whole we have decided to go forward with sheep.” “If and when a bighorn die-off occurs I want you to know that we feel
we have done everything that we have been ask (sic) and been patient
for years and you will have to answer for what happens,” Robbins wrote.In the worst cases pneumonia from domestic sheep can obliterate
bighorn herds, erasing years of work on the part of biologists, agencies
and cooperative landowners...
more
2 comments:
A scientist in Idaho was unable to confirm that big horn sheep got pneumonia from domestic sheep. Dr. Marie Bulgin (sp) is her name
drjohn is right --- there is no scientific evidence that bacterial pathogens that cause pneumonia spread from domestic sheep to bighorn sheep in natural habitats. No record of morbidity or mortality exists that is the result of bighorn sheep that are sick because of domestic sheep disease in the wild. There is a substantial amount of scientific evidence that shows both domestic sheep and bighorn sheep have the pneumonia causing bacteria in their respiratory systems and the immune systems keep them from being sick until stress inhibits their immune responses. The bacteria in domestic and wild sheep are not the same variety as determined by genetic analysis; but the bacteria cause animals to have the same apparent symptoms. It is usually called shipping fever in domestic sheep. The entire allegation of "disease transmission" is a fabrication that allows biologists to find someone else to blame for bighorn sheep dieoffs and for the purpose of attacking ranchers who own sheep.
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