Environmental Justice on the Payette NF
The Payette National Forest has modified a plan to exclude domestic sheep on the basis that they transmit diseases, specifically pneumonia, to wild bighorn sheep. They base that contention on speculative computer models, not empirical evidence.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Payette NF, January 25, 2010 [here]
Update to Bighorn Sheep Viability Study Released Today
Today the Payette National Forest (PNF) released updated information pertaining to the analysis in the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) to supplement the 2003 Southwest Idaho Ecogroup Land and Resource Management Plan FEIS (Forest Plan) as it relates to bighorn sheep viability on the Payette National Forest. The DSEIS was released in October 2008. This supplemental report to the DSEIS contains the following updates:
* Since the release of the DSEIS the PNF has worked with population and disease modeling experts from the University of California at Davis to develop models based on telemetry data from bighorn sheep populations that utilize habitat on or adjacent to the PNF.
* In September 2009, the Regional Forester determined that bighorn sheep merited designation as a Sensitive Species in Region 4 because of population declines from disease. This document will update and analyze the alternatives in light of the new designation.
* The Economic Impact Analysis has been changed to include both community level and regional level impact models in response to public comment on the DSEIS.
* A section on Environmental Justice has been added to the Economic Analysis. Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, education level, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws. Environmental Justice seeks to ensure that minority and low income communities have access to public information relating to human health and environmental planning, regulations, and enforcement.
The updated information includes a revised source habitat model and core herd home range analysis, a new contact analysis, and a disease model. To better address the issue of bighorn sheep viability, several additional alternative management approaches were developed and analyzed in the DSEIS. However, the new models and updated analyses led to the development of five new alternative approaches which are described, displayed and analyzed in the Updated Information Report. …
The Idaho Statesman reports:
Idaho Statesman, 01/28/10 [here]
LEWISTON, Idaho — The Payette National Forest has released a set of proposed updates to its plan to keep domestic sheep from intermingling with wild bighorns, a species susceptible to pneumonia that can be passed along by their domestic cousins.
Forest officials are taking public comment on the 184-page document that spells out five new alternatives to keep the herds segregated. It also includes the latest scientific analysis on the health risks wild bighorns face in sharing habitat with domestics.
Forest managers have been working to update the plan since 2005 when the chief of the U.S. Forest Service declared that the previous plan failed to adequately protect wild sheep in north-central Idaho.
The draft, citing field observations and scientific research, finds bighorn sheep have a high probability of contracting fatal pneumonia after contact with domestic sheep. …
Many wildlife scientists are convinced contact between domestic sheep and bighorns reintroduced into the region in the 1970s is behind deadly disease outbreaks. Disease transmission concerns figured prominently in an Oct. 14 federal court ruling that banished a rancher from his family’s historic grazing ground along the Salmon River. …
The wildlife biologists say one thing, but veterinarians disagree and maintain that there is no proof that disease transmission occurs:
A Review of Bighorn Sheep Articles used for the Payette DSIES [here]
Marie S Bulgin DVM, Caldwell ID
Cat Urbigkit, Pinedale, WY 82941Introduction
The Payette National Forest DSEIS calls for separation between bighorn sheep and domestic sheep. The result will be closure of some domestic sheep grazing allotments and reduction of grazing area for domestic sheep on others. The end result will be the going out of business of several if not all of the permittees on the Payette National Forest. Furthermore, the acceptance of this plan will, no doubt be the template for closure of all other allotments all over the West which have the potential of bighorn sheep visitation.
Transmission of disease to the bighorns by the domestic sheep is the only reason cited for disallowing the domestic sheep on parts of the forest. The purpose of this paper is to review the information cited to justify the closures. The Payette DSEIS is relying heavily on wildlife biologists and their testimony. Unfortunately, wildlife biologists are not disease experts and they are relying heavily on assumptions. The “Risk Analysis of Disease Transmission Between Domestic Sheep and Bighorn Sheep on the Payette National Forest” the (RADT), a document prepared by 6 wildlife biologists, none disease experts, microbiologists or mathematicians is such evidence. Another document authored by two wildlife biologists specifically for ammunition against the domestic sheep is “A Review of Disease Related Conflicts Between Domestic Sheep and Goats and Bighorn Sheep” (Conflict Review), a review using other reviews and interpretation of other non-disease expert authors. Therefore, this document will concentrate on many of those references and examine exactly what they did report. …
Conclusions
Since bighorn sheep have been reintroduced into areas where domestic sheep have historically grazed and domestic sheep graze where bighorn sheep historically live, it is natural that there would be periodic interaction. Since disease in bighorn sheep also happens periodically, it is not surprising that an occasional disease outbreak coincides with sighting of domestic sheep in the area. As indicated above, many interactions do occur with no resulting disease problems. Studies, involving multiple necropsies and cultures of numerous animals involved in range interactions have been done over a long period of time (20 years) and in no case have die-offs been tied to organisms carried by domestic sheep. So, the evidence linking die-offs of free ranging bighorns to domestic sheep is, at best, circumstantial. Many bighorns are captured and cultured annually, so we do know that occasional healthy bighorns do carry “killer bugs”, however, even though wildlife managers have this information, none of these animals have been followed, so it is unclear whether they remain healthy for long periods of time. Apparently, there are no management practices in place to deal with animals carrying the more pathogenic leukotoxin carrying Pasteurellas spp. and in some cases are used to augment other established populations.
It is obvious that we are dealing with a very fragile species. Thinking that the solution to making them into a healthy, vigorous large population across the modern West today by removing the domestic sheep from the range is extremely naïve and dangerous-dangerous because the bighorns will continue to die-off and we still won’t know how to solve the problem.
Work in Montana and Wyoming improving range, improving access to needed minerals, reducing wildlife competition, reducing predation, providing safe corridors for winter/summer movement have all had positive effects on bighorn numbers; so it appears that these types of activities are beneficial for bighorn health. None of it involved removing domestic sheep from the range. Without incorporating this kind of management, removing domestic sheep from the range will just provide more tinder for wild fires, drive sheep producers out of business, insure that rural private lands are developed thus removing more winter range for the present wildlife, including bighorn sheep, a real lose-lose scenario.
For daring to release the above report, Dr. Marie S. Bulgin DVM, was suspended from her job as head of the University of Idaho’s Caine Veterinary Teaching and Research Center last June [here]. Six months later she was reinstated [here], because UI investigators found no evidence of scientific misconduct.
U of I reinstates Marie Bulgin and finds no evidence of ’scientific misconduct’ in wild sheep controversy
Idaho Statesman 01/04/10 [here]
The University of Idaho reinstated a professor of veterinary medicine that had raised criticism for her comments to a legislative committee about whether disease could be transmitted between wild sheep and domestic sheep.
A school review cleared Bulgin of misconduct and officials said she will resume her teaching and research position under a “conflict management plan.” …
[Vice President for Research Jack] McIver did not find evidence of scientific misconduct in her testimony or written statements.
Bulgin will resume her former role in teaching, research and coordinating the veterinary medicine education program at the Caine Center and the university will begin restructuring overall administration of the Caine Center. Under university policy, Bulgin will operate under an approved conflict management plan that will address, among other things, her private activities as an advocate for the sheep industry. Conflict management plans are part of the university’s Faculty and Staff Handbook (FSH 6240, D-1). Details about an individual’s specific conflict management plan are part of the personnel record and, under Idaho law, are confidential.
To put all this in context, enviro groups attempts to get the Payette NF to remove sheep from longstanding grazing allotments on the basis of alleged disease transmission to bighorn sheep. Dr. Marie S. Bulgin DVM, head of the University of Idaho’s Caine Veterinary Teaching and Research Center, submitted scientific findings that countered the allegations. The enviro groups, in the person of Craig Gehrke, regional director of The Wilderness Society, raised such a fuss that Dr. Bulgin was suspended from her job.
Now the Payette NF is using computer models to justify domestic sheep removal, because the scientific findings by veterinarians do not suit their political agenda. They did add, however, some useless verbiage about “environmental justice.”
Justice to whom? To professional veterinarians doing their jobs with integrity? To stockmen with longstanding grazing permits? Or to anti-forest, pro-holocaust, enviro-rapers like Craig Gerke, a paid shill for a quango [here] that wishes to commandeer and destroy public land and will step on anyone who opposes them?
For graphic examples of the kind of stewardship the Payette NF is famous for, and that the Wilderness Society wholeheartedly endorses, see [here]. You decide if the Payette NF leadership is pro environmental justice or anti.
