Nevada: The Last Sheepherder

...Vogler has herded sheep in central Nevada for 35 years, a stubborn adherent to an industry he knows is in great peril. He’s an aging ambassador to a colorful 140-year old tradition that got its start in Nevada in the 1880s, when immigrant Basque families dominated the scene with their innate know-how and sprawling flocks. The trade has watched its sheep numbers plummet from one million a century ago to just 75,000 today, the vestiges of a once-thriving industry now propped up by a dozen remaining families, many of them Basque. Reasons for the decline are numerous: Consumers have moved away from even the finer merino-blend wool toward synthetic-fiber clothing. Herders must also fight off predators such as coyotes and mountain lions, which can thin a flock by 15 percent or more in a year. There are regular droughts and wildfires, as well as bouts of loneliness and depression. Vogler insists he also deals with two-legged threats — wildlife activists, for example, who claim that even healthy domestic sheep carry strains of a respiratory-tract bacteria that can cause fatal pneumonia in wild Bighorn sheep, whose numbers are also in decline. (Vogler says the connection is exaggerated.) Or Big City water officials who want to drain Nevada’s rural aquifers to build more housing tracts around Las Vegas. There are also the constant tensions of running herds on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, whose officials don’t always see things his way. Experience has taught him that some have personal agendas, like giving more credence to wildlife activists than they do ranchers. Still others assume he’s just another rich rancher, or a Cliven Bundy wannabe who’ll thumb his nose at any regulation. (BLM officials, of course, say this is all nonsense.) Sheep stockmen such as Vogler also struggle to hire herders from such South American nations as Peru and Chile, who tend to far-flung bands of sheep for months on end, often going weeks without encountering another human being. Tightening immigration laws mean it’s harder to bring foreign workers into the U.S., and some bolt after arriving, leaving the bill for their visa and flight to the ranchers. The result: Remaining sheep ranchers say their children want nothing to do with the business, leaving them to fret about its future...MORE