Bighorn sheep advocates hear update on research

PULLMAN, Wash. -- - Bighorn sheep advocates from across the country heard promising details on the research into the pneumonia strain that has ravaged wild herds across the West.

But with a vaccine still estimated to be a decade or more away, they stood solidly behind the strategy that calls for keeping wild sheep and domestics separated.

"For right now, temporal and spatial separation is the best technique we have. The fight and the debate is about how to achieve that separation," said Kevin Hurley, conservation director of the Wild Sheep Foundation.

Officers from the national foundation and dozens of its chapters and affiliates across the U.S. and Canada toured the Washington State University Veterinary Hospital Friday, where researchers are trying to find a vaccine to inoculate wild sheep against the disease and a treatment that will keep domestic sheep from infecting bighorns.

Domestic sheep carry bacteria that triggers the disease and has led to bighorn die-offs and lingering illness in herds across the Western U.S. and Canada, with herds in Hells Canyon and the Salmon River canyon among them. Wildlife managers have called for a policy of separation that essentially amounts to ending domestic sheep grazing on public land, when grazing allotments overlap wild sheep habitat.

That strategy was adopted by Idaho’s Payette National Forest two years ago. Forest officials slashed domestic sheep grazing by 70 percent over a three-year period starting last summer. However Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, has since tried to stop, or stall the plan through riders attached to federal spending bills. His first effort was turned away by a federal judge and just this week he attached a second rider to a fiscal 2013 bill that funds the Forest Service and other land management agencies.

Simpson has said he wants to give researchers time to come up with a vaccine that protects sheep and doesn’t put ranchers out of business. There is some promise in that direction. Last year, WSU professor Subramaniam Srikumaran successfully inoculated four captive bighorn sheep against the disease. While the effort was successful, he said it is still experimental and perfecting it will take time.

"I don’t want to give you the idea this vaccine is ready," he said. "It could easily be another 10 to 15 years."

Srikumaran and others are working on a way to treat domestic sheep so they don’t pass on the bacteria to wild sheep. Wildlife managers and sheep advocates much prefer that approach. They say even if a vaccine were developed, it would be nearly impossible to administer it to wild sheep that make their home in some of the most rugged terrain in North America.

Hurley said both are worth pursuing.

"We want to have the (vaccine) tool available in the event we get our hands on a wild sheep, but the emphasis should be on trying to render the domestics less lethal."

The foundation presented Srikumaran and the university with $275,000 to carry on the research.

Foundation chairman Jack Atcheson Jr. of Butte, Mont., said money is the key to finding long-term solutions and called for others such as the livestock industry to join the effort.

"The load is a little heavy," he said. "If more people helped, maybe we could speed up the process."

The sheep foundation will wrap up a four-day summit based in and around Lewiston today with a jet boat tour of Hells Canyon. The summit is sponsored by the Idaho, Oregon and Washington chapters of the Wild Sheep Foundation.

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)2012 the Lewiston Tribune (Lewiston, Idaho)

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