The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the Idaho Wool Growers Association and others in a case that could have implications for grazing rules across the west.
The plaintiffs sued the U.S Forest Service in 2012, claiming that the agency “illegally shut down 70 percent of sheep grazing in the Payette National Forest in west-central Idaho based on unproven disease transmission between domestic and bighorn sheep,” says The Billings Gazette. The district court of Idaho, and now a federal court, disagreed. The rulings open the way for the Forest Service to limit domestic sheep grazing in other areas to protect bighorns. Many Western states are interested in expanding the bighorn population as a draw for tourism and big-game hunters.
“A lot of people were looking at this [case] waiting to see what [the court] did,” said Laurie Rule of Advocates for the West. This marks the first the first time a U.S. circuit court has ruled on disease transmission between the species, says the Gazette.The decision could set a precedent for grazing rules in other forests.
North America once had 2 million bighorn sheep, but today the number hovers around 10 percent of that due to habitat loss, over-hunting, food competition and disease transmission from domestic sheep.
Jim Jeffres of the Idaho Wild Sheep Foundation told the Gazette that domestic sheep have long been seen as more important than wild populations. It’s almost not even worth trying to transplant bighorn sheep with a farmed herd in the area, he said, because the wild sheep will die off from disease unless there are measures to protect them.
“With the politics involved it’s extremely difficult for any state agency to address this, and it’s politically unsafe for a lot of federal agencies to push this,” he said.
Stan Boyd, the executive director of The Idaho Wool Association, says his group is considering its next step. “We just keep plugging on,” he said, adding that perhaps one day sheep farmers will be able to use a vaccine to stop disease transmission to bighorns.