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November 9, 2023

Posted in

Around The West

Originally found on RANGEfire!.

Bonnie Brown-Eddy

Fort Collins Coloradoan

Bighorn sheep are the trojan horse of the anti-grazing activists

In response to Joe Lewandowsky’s opinion piece, “Wild Bighorns in peril in Colorado, Rocky Mountain West,” I would like to share some facts ignored in the emotional rhetoric and scare tactics employed by anti-grazing activists.

Lewandowski gives the impression that any contact with domestic sheep is always fatal. This misconception has its roots in “pen” studies that forced wild bighorn sheep to commingle with domestic sheep, with resulting high mortality rates for bighorns. The inherent problem with this is that forced contact between the two species is not indicative of open range grazing.

Rooted even deeper than the “pen” studies agenda-driven extrapolation to end domestic sheep grazing, is the historical abundance of bighorns in North America. With today’s technology (aerial flights, trail cams, etc.) wild game agencies are hard-pressed to make accurate counts of wildlife populations. As such, historical observations from a century ago are interesting but cannot be relied upon as fact; and in the same line of thought, speculation and assumptions about the historic decline of bighorns cannot be relied upon as fact.

While Lewandowski concocts “the few ‘woolgrowers’ in Colorado hold inordinate political power because their agricultural status is somehow sacrosanct,” I would offer that the wool growers have been able to refute much of the hysteria and manipulation of data regarding bighorns and domestics; federal lands are still multiple use; and Americans still cherish domestic food and fiber production as well as wildlife and habitat.