For a decade, The Wilderness Society has led efforts to provide bighorn sheep their own place in the forest, free from grazing domestic sheep that spread disease.
Bighorn Sheep are one of the West’s iconic wildlife species, conjuring images of rugged mountains and deep, sheer-walled canyons. What was once one of the most widespread wildlife species in the West is now only at a fraction of its former number.
The attached coalition letter to Congress is to oppose any inclusion in the FY12 House/Senate Interior Appropriation legislation of Congressman Mike Simpson’s provisions from the FY12 House Interior Appropriation legislation that would derail on-going efforts to recover declining populatio
BOISE - One of the last remaining Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sheep grazing allotments in the Salmon River corridor was halted yesterday when U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Winmill granted a motion to restrict grazing that puts Bighorn Sheep at risk. The Wilderness Society and our legal partners at The Western Watershed Project and the Hell’s Canyon Preservation Council filed the motion in hopes of ending domestic sheep grazing on Partridge Creek Allotment where one of the highest threat to bighorn sheep exists.
Their populations have been ravaged, their lambs taken by disease. But now, after decades of decline, Idaho’s hammered bighorn populations could have a chance of making a comeback.
Today, only about 2,000 bighorn sheep still live in Idaho, a miniscule number compared to the tens of thousands of bighorn that once lived in the state’s rugged hills and rocky crags.
“Right now they’re quite a treat to see because there aren’t that many around,” said Craig Gehrke, The Wilderness Society’s Regional Director in Idaho.
