Aney

As hard as we might try, the year 2020 will not be easily forgotten. With much of the world’s human population threatened by a disease for which we have no natural resistance, we have become very familiar with the language and practices of public health and the science of epidemiology.

We try to isolate ourselves away from others who might be infected. We identify and discourage risky behaviors, suffering the consequences when not everyone follows the rules. Our best and brightest are working nonstop to develop an effective vaccine, in hopes that one will become widely available before it’s too late.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with some good friends and fellow wildlife biologists about COVID-19 (while remaining socially distanced, of course). It struck us that many of the challenges we are facing with this virus are the same challenges affecting another species living with us in Northeast Oregon — bighorn sheep.

California and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep are charismatic species living in some of the most rugged and roughest country in Eastern Oregon. When traveling the Columbia Gorge, do you crane your neck in hopes of spotting the sheep alongside Interstate 84? I do. My go-to location to see sheep is centered on milepost 125.

Bighorns were once quite widespread east of the Cascades, important to native peoples and widely recorded by early explorers. Overhunting and disease wiped out bighorns in Oregon by the mid-1940s. An intensive (and expensive) campaign managed to reintroduce sheep into pockets of suitable habitat, and for a while some of these bands did well, but now their continued survival is tenuous.

The biggest current threat to bighorns is pneumonia, induced by several viruses and parasites carried by domestic sheep and goats and for which bighorns have little natural resistance. This disease has forced wildlife managers to all but suspend more reintroductions in Oregon, because it is getting harder and harder to find places to put bighorns where they won’t encounter their disease-carrying domestic relatives.

You could say that the behavior of bighorn sheep is partly to blame, as some individuals have unhealthy habits. Occasionally, a young sheep will go on a prodigal walkabout, roaming 20 miles or more in search of who knows what — maybe just scratching that wanderlust itch? Typically these young nomads will return to their natal herd, and if they had come into contact with an infected domestic or wild sheep while on their rove, they will bring the disease back with them, often with devastating results for the entire herd. Adults die, lambs born in subsequent years fail to survive and the herd eventually dies out.

Here’s the rub. Even with this biology, we could have healthy populations of bighorn sheep on public land well-distributed across Northeast Oregon, but because of tradition, economics, policy and politics, we have chosen not to do so.

Combined, the Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman national forests permit more than 9,000 domestic sheep to graze on public lands every summer, effectively preventing bighorns from using much of their historical range. In eastern Umatilla County, for example, we have quality, historical bighorn sheep habitat on public lands in the Umatilla and Walla Walla river drainages. Bighorn sheep simply cannot survive there today because of the presence of domestic sheep.

The interests of a few, very few, sheep ranchers have trumped the broader public interest of healthy native wildlife populations, putting the existing small bands of bighorns at risk and with no room to expand.

Why does this happen? There’s very little direct economic benefit to the American public from this deal. Because of national policy, the national forest permit fee for sheep works out to about 27 cents per animal per month, or less than a penny a day. If you or I had a herd of 100 sheep, and we could manage to get our hands on one of those grazing permits, it would cost us about $27 to graze our entire herd for a month.

A sweet deal for a very few ranches, a tragic deal for bighorns.

I do respect and appreciate the legacy of ranching families who live in small communities across the rural West, and that rely on national forests as part of their livestock operation. But there are things that we can do to improve prospects for native wildlife.

One thing we can do is to convert the remaining sheep grazing allotments to cattle grazing, as has been done across the West, including most allotments in Northeast Oregon forests. Cattle are not known to carry the diseases that infect bighorns.

Another possible solution is to see that sheep that graze on national forests are certified as free of the diseases that infect wildlife. A vaccine for bighorns has thus far proven elusive, but there are domestic sheep herds that are free of the viruses that kill bighorns.

It’s like how we are learning to deal with COVID — isolate the vulnerable populations. Identify those that are sick or that carry disease, and prevent them from infecting the healthy. Employ effective measures to protect the most vulnerable. Develop vaccines so that we can build herd immunity.

And until there is a vaccine, make smart choices that protect those that have no immunity. That’s how we care for each other, and how we should care for creatures that share our world.

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