Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't forget anything, all right, I want to get to
Speaker 1: I want to do all the introductions and explain where
Speaker 1: we're at. But first I've a quick question, is based
Speaker 1: off of painting that I just ran into in the
Speaker 1: entryway of the Wild Cheap Foundation. Um do wolves get
Speaker 1: after big horns? I think I think, um mountain line
Speaker 1: and clay mountain line probably a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a problem, certainly in the lower forty eight, But yeah,
Speaker 1: wolves definitely into a thin horn habitat and and big
Speaker 1: time up in BC and in Alberta. You bet. It
Speaker 1: just seems like they, I don't know, man, just feels
Speaker 1: like like a little bit out of there, like that
Speaker 1: kind of country, seems a little bit out of their
Speaker 1: area of expertise. But they've him in the winter or
Speaker 1: what the big horn like down here in lower forty
Speaker 1: eight in the winter, Well they'll they'll hit them different
Speaker 1: times of a year. But yeah, absolutely, Uh further south
Speaker 1: desert big horns. She has great just referenced mountain lions
Speaker 1: are a little bit tougher, tougher on sheep than wolves,
Speaker 1: but uh, yeah, it's uh, it's a tough place to
Speaker 1: make a living. Have there been cases where Mexican gray
Speaker 1: wolves have killed desert big horns. Don't know about that yet,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't. I don't have any documentation of that.
Speaker 1: I have not heard that, but I'm sure they would. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: it seems like a formidable like when you when you
Speaker 1: factor the topography and then just like the horns structure
Speaker 1: and stuff, it seems like a formidable foe. They really are.
Speaker 1: If you if you look at the way the animals built,
Speaker 1: you know, the way their eyes are positioned on their heads.
Speaker 1: If you look at these mounts in this room, just
Speaker 1: just look it. You know how much they see. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, their greatest defense. They see a long ways,
Speaker 1: a lot further than than we do. If you look
Speaker 1: at the country in which they live, it's the topography
Speaker 1: is tough. There's always escaped terrain and places for those
Speaker 1: animals to escape. So you know they've survived. Uh, they've
Speaker 1: adapted and and learned to deal with predator issues through time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's tough. There's a if you're there's
Speaker 1: a guy I can't remember his name, the professor at
Speaker 1: University of Alaska at Fairbanks, and he wrote like a
Speaker 1: natural history book about Alaska, and in and he talks
Speaker 1: about an eyewitness account of a friend of his who
Speaker 1: watched a single Linx chase a doll ram donna, gully,
Speaker 1: jump on its back and kill it with a bike
Speaker 1: to the basement's neck. Yep, a lynx who's like a
Speaker 1: snowshoe hair specialist. Well, it's just not it's it's not
Speaker 1: just the four legged predators either. You have eagles and
Speaker 1: and other things. In fact, I've observed firsthand golden eagles.
Speaker 1: I was hiking an area one time, uh, working with sheep,
Speaker 1: and in overhead I saw a lamb go by it.
Speaker 1: No really, Oh yeah, so it's it's not just the
Speaker 1: four legged prey. That's pretty nuts. I heard that they
Speaker 1: kill them, But then though they carried him off, I
Speaker 1: thought they just like ran them off. They somehow scared
Speaker 1: him or spooked him or ran them off ledges and
Speaker 1: then killed him. Yeah, observed it firsthand. They picked them up.
Speaker 1: You know, they're small, tiny, a little lamb, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: We watched a golden eagle spend twenty minutes working over
Speaker 1: a bull elk. Here's two gold two working over a
Speaker 1: bull dive bomb in his head. And you could tell
Speaker 1: us boy did not like he was agitated. Man, I've
Speaker 1: flown surveys and almost had them land in the helicopter
Speaker 1: with you, and they are a huge all right, so
Speaker 1: we we should probably so, Like I said, we're at
Speaker 1: the you guys called the World Headquarters, World Headquarters, Wildchief Foundation,
Speaker 1: World Headquarters, Wild Cheap Foundation, Bozeman, Montana. Still in Bozeman,
Speaker 1: Still in Boseman. It's almost almost Belgrade and almost four corners,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a Bozeman address. So if I write
Speaker 1: you a letter, I proposeman, Um, let's go around do uh,
Speaker 1: let's go around to introductions. We'll do it like I
Speaker 1: like to do it, as though I'm dealing cards. And
Speaker 1: so you're up. Uh. Garrett Longs on the marketing and
Speaker 1: communications director here Uh Exhibits and sponsors manager, store manager,
Speaker 1: UM what else? Cre you clean? Toilet clean toilets um
Speaker 1: on a frequent basis. And I came over here just recently,
Speaker 1: about three months ago. I previously was the conservation leader
Speaker 1: over at Sitka UM sick of gear just down the road, UM,
Speaker 1: and came over here to just do real conservation work,
Speaker 1: and it's been a blast. Man, it's been pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So you guys probably have a you probably had a
Speaker 1: relationship with this organization when you were there, because I
Speaker 1: know Sake of does a lot of stuff in support
Speaker 1: of Yeah, so so my job there it was actually
Speaker 1: kind of inverse. So what it is here. I I
Speaker 1: took in all the contracts, conservation contracts, and decided what
Speaker 1: we spent money on prioritized conservation organizations. So it was
Speaker 1: great actually coming to the Wild Cheap Foundation because they
Speaker 1: were one of one of the groups that I use
Speaker 1: as an example, you know, going through like forms and
Speaker 1: things like that with other organizations like hey, this is
Speaker 1: what we're looking for. These are the type of projects
Speaker 1: we want to fund, um all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it was pretty cool getting a call from Gray
Speaker 1: But yeah, I had worked with them a lot, and
Speaker 1: then I still work with them over there a lot
Speaker 1: too because they support us very heavily. That's great, Go ahead,
Speaker 1: sir uh Clay Brewer. I'm the Big Horn program lead
Speaker 1: UH conservation director for the Wild Chief Foundation. I worked
Speaker 1: for almost thirty years Texas Departs and while off department
Speaker 1: was the did a lot of things. Was the the
Speaker 1: big Horn mule deer prong horn guy for years. UH
Speaker 1: served in various leadership roles. UH actually served as the
Speaker 1: interim Widlife director for a year and a half and
Speaker 1: and UH So my experience I have UH primarily on
Speaker 1: the ground experience. UM, I'm not necessarily enamored with these
Speaker 1: sorts of things that we're doing here today. I've I've
Speaker 1: spent my life out in the middle of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: I enjoy that that aspect of it. So UH, I
Speaker 1: spent the majority of my my career restoring cheap big
Speaker 1: horn cheap in Texas. They were extrapated by about nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: and so through our efforts that as late as nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty and then got extrapated. The last documented sighting of
Speaker 1: a native Texas big horn occurred October of nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: In the series D you have Little Mountains, which is
Speaker 1: a little bit south of U of the Guadaloupe Mountains.
Speaker 1: Usually we're talking about something vanishing. It's twenty years earlier.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty was what what we guess. Anyway, So after that, UH,
Speaker 1: lots of work, lots of transplants, lots of things, going on.
Speaker 1: But uh, bighorns sheep at late eighteen hundred population levels
Speaker 1: right now, was anybody okay? In nineteen sixty in Texas
Speaker 1: after the last one vanished? Was it? What a day
Speaker 1: later they started recovery? I mean, were they were already
Speaker 1: paying attention to it as they were on their way out. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a guy hired in the forties and uh,
Speaker 1: this is a guy by the name of Birch Carson.
Speaker 1: He was hired to document the decline a bighorn cheap
Speaker 1: in Texas. And so today, well I give I'll give
Speaker 1: you my experience. I was a younger guy then and
Speaker 1: and was hiking through the mountains and it was actually, uh,
Speaker 1: we we did and still got all of our own
Speaker 1: sheep hunts. So I was preparing the first first had
Speaker 1: a sheep hunter coming here. You mean the state guys,
Speaker 1: State of Texas. Yes, and you guys give out how
Speaker 1: many tags every year? Well it varies down now fifteen
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen tags every year. So we've come along ways.
Speaker 1: So if you draw a big horn tag in Texas,
Speaker 1: you go out and hunt with a you go out
Speaker 1: or guided by a state biologist. Or well, if you
Speaker 1: buy a state tag. Uh, they're also private landowner tags.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit different. Um. Some some hunters prefer
Speaker 1: to bring their own their own guide, which which is fine.
Speaker 1: We like that too. Um it makes us no difference.
Speaker 1: But uh so anywather you you asked me about the
Speaker 1: did they see it coming? And and um, Texas was
Speaker 1: no different than the rest of the states where you
Speaker 1: you hear about the domestic sheep issues. And we lost
Speaker 1: our sheep for the very same reasons. And so a
Speaker 1: guy by the name of Birch Carson was hired in
Speaker 1: the forties to document the disappearance of big horn sheep
Speaker 1: in Texas. And so I was getting ready for sheep hunt,
Speaker 1: and I was hiking along that It was in January,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty cool, cool in the mountains, and um,
Speaker 1: so I was. I was walking down the ridge, and
Speaker 1: I decided to get off the ridge and I started
Speaker 1: hiking down a deer trail. And so I walked the
Speaker 1: deer trail for a ways and I came into an opening,
Speaker 1: a small bowl in the bottom of these three just
Speaker 1: three knobs around and and he got steel. The wind
Speaker 1: stop blowing and it got steel. And I thought, man,
Speaker 1: this would be a great place to eat my lunch,
Speaker 1: took my pack frame off, sat out on the ground.
Speaker 1: I looked over on the ground. It said there was
Speaker 1: a carving in the rocket. It said W. B. Carson,
Speaker 1: sheep inspector in ninety And so he became a hobby
Speaker 1: of mine. Uh. I spent a lot of time by myself,
Speaker 1: and so I started looking for these things. And every
Speaker 1: time I thought I was the only human being to
Speaker 1: ever see this, I would look around on the ground
Speaker 1: and I would find another carving and it would say
Speaker 1: cheap inspector, Uh Burt W B. Carson. And so I
Speaker 1: found caves the guy lived in. There's one. There's a
Speaker 1: cave in the Texas Mountains where the guy's clothes are
Speaker 1: still hanging in the cave today. And so so he
Speaker 1: documented the decline. That's nuts man, That's like Boone and
Speaker 1: Boone's day, right through names on. Oh, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting history. There there's a a guy named Bob Anderson.
Speaker 1: You guys are probably familiar with great rams one to three. Um.
Speaker 1: He became interested in in Birch Carson and so he uh,
Speaker 1: he actually wrote a book, He's got one. I wrote
Speaker 1: the forward for his book and and Uh, he never
Speaker 1: has published it. He hadn't done anything with it, so
Speaker 1: he's trying to figure out who his audience was. But
Speaker 1: it's called something like the Desert Wonder or something like that.
Speaker 1: So the guy was a taxidermist and just interesting history.
Speaker 1: World War two veteran. Uh was injured in World War
Speaker 1: Two and came back and hiked those mountains with a
Speaker 1: limp and so, you know, pretty rough country. So uh
Speaker 1: So a short time later, in the mid fifties, there
Speaker 1: was a cooperative agreement developed between the the at that time,
Speaker 1: the Texas Game Fish and I wish your commission um
Speaker 1: boone and Crockett Club, Arizona Game and Fish Department. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember who else Wildlife Management Institute. Uh
Speaker 1: we brought sheep in from Arizona and uh try and
Speaker 1: in the early years there, uh you know, in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, like most jurisdictions, it was people focused
Speaker 1: on protections. Uh there were like in Texas nineteen o
Speaker 1: three there was a hunting prohibition enacted and so then
Speaker 1: then in the mid fifties it was propagation. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's always a joke running around in those days. Most states,
Speaker 1: the Desert Bighorn Council was formed in the fifties because
Speaker 1: every state was in the same boat. And uh, some
Speaker 1: people would have you know, they only had two sheep left,
Speaker 1: and they knew him by name, you know, and Bob
Speaker 1: didn't feel so well. It was it was kind of
Speaker 1: the joke, the running joke, and so so anyway, so
Speaker 1: propagation efforts were implemented in the mid nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: and since that time, UH two seven while sheeper translocated
Speaker 1: to Texas. Uh coming out of Arizona, no different places.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, and I think I think I have those
Speaker 1: numbers wrong. It's more like it's it's it's uh. I
Speaker 1: think a total of a hundred and seven came from Nevada,
Speaker 1: thirty one from Arizona, six from Mexico, and too from Utah.
Speaker 1: So that's the lineage of of today's desert bighorn populations
Speaker 1: in Texas. And so, uh so we worked together. We
Speaker 1: we traded. In the early years, we traded Arizona, UH
Speaker 1: four pronghorn they they had, they were short on pronghorn
Speaker 1: at that time. Texas had plenty of prong horns. So
Speaker 1: we would swamp animals and and more recently, I can
Speaker 1: tell you I was at a in in those days.
Speaker 1: The it was a finale convention, and people were coming
Speaker 1: by my booth from the state of Nevada, and so
Speaker 1: we're pretty upset with Texas. And I couldn't figure out why,
Speaker 1: what the what the story was, and I thought, man,
Speaker 1: just having a bad day. And so later on, I, uh,
Speaker 1: I was reading newspaper and the headlines with letters about
Speaker 1: three inches big said state of Nevada trades turkeys for
Speaker 1: big orange sheep. And so the the the Nevadas were
Speaker 1: not real happy about that trade, and and so but
Speaker 1: if it if it were not for that, then none
Speaker 1: of us would have any wildlife. Um, and so as
Speaker 1: as time went on in our case, Uh, what's interesting
Speaker 1: about that is the landowners. You know, we had problems
Speaker 1: with with disease issues in the thirties and and lost
Speaker 1: all of our sheep later on. It was a slow progression,
Speaker 1: we lost those sheep. And so we worked Texas a
Speaker 1: private landowners state, uh ninety seven percent privately owned, but
Speaker 1: uh domestic sheep. Landowners raised domestic sheep. And then later
Speaker 1: on the land the very landowners that we worked with,
Speaker 1: that where the problems occurred years ago. Are the very
Speaker 1: same landowners that helped us restore sheep today their descendants
Speaker 1: and so we did that together. And so, like I said,
Speaker 1: today we're probably eighteen hundred animals. Um, so we've surpassed
Speaker 1: the late the late eighteen hundred population levels and and
Speaker 1: numbers continue to spandu expand populations continue to grow, and
Speaker 1: so so far, so good. Uh but it only took
Speaker 1: you know, sixty years or so or seventy years for
Speaker 1: that to happen. Start figuring out. Yeah, we'll dig into
Speaker 1: that whole story called Bunch's interesting and then honest of course,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Scott Peckham, I'm the big game ecologist for
Speaker 1: the Confederated Tribes of the Matila Indian Reservation in northeast
Speaker 1: Oregon in southeast Washington. So I work on anything pur
Speaker 1: view of the big game headline and uh so wear
Speaker 1: a lot of hats. I should tell you all about
Speaker 1: the Elk tag I drew. That would be good. I
Speaker 1: heard extreme in the southeast corner of the state. You
Speaker 1: know it real well. Points I've seen some big animals
Speaker 1: in that part of the country. But I know people
Speaker 1: that really know, really well. I know the sheep country
Speaker 1: better than the Elk country there, but I do see
Speaker 1: big bulls in there when I'm doing sheep work. So
Speaker 1: so you you focus on sheep in that area. Uh.
Speaker 1: Typically yeah, in in Southeast Washington, I'm usually up there
Speaker 1: working on the sort of the Hell's Canyon initiative work
Speaker 1: that's going on. Um, you you back up like like
Speaker 1: you inform and back up the tribe's perspective on big
Speaker 1: game management exactly, because that's interesting because you're actually looking
Speaker 1: at two different states. Yes, yeah, almost three, but yeah,
Speaker 1: to both Southeast Washington. So there's three tribes under under
Speaker 1: one treaty UM, the Walla Walla, Cayuse and you Matila
Speaker 1: Um and they are traditional territory expanded that the state
Speaker 1: boundaries there. So most of the northern Blue Mountains were
Speaker 1: towards um Past Look, Grand Oregon, down south towards John Day,
Speaker 1: so parts of various basins. So what's your like, what's
Speaker 1: your professional mandate? Then? To basically protect, conserve and restore
Speaker 1: big game populations and their habitat. That's our program mission
Speaker 1: and that's that's a directive coming from those tribes. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have a first foods mission for our Department Natural
Speaker 1: Resources which is fairly well staffy of about a hundred employees,
Speaker 1: and d and R itself. Our wildlife programs pretty small
Speaker 1: about nine employees. Um. But yeah, under the big game mantra,
Speaker 1: we are that's our directive to protect, restore, and enhance
Speaker 1: habitat and populations. And I'm guessing you most coordinate with
Speaker 1: states and all the time. Yea, we work on because
Speaker 1: basically a lot of the wildlife habitat where the treaty
Speaker 1: hunting occurs, where the rights are allowed to exercise or
Speaker 1: treaty hunting right is on federal public lands. So we
Speaker 1: work with the land managers of BLM and Force Service,
Speaker 1: and then we work with the states obviously because they
Speaker 1: tend to do more of the population level management, so
Speaker 1: we coordinate with them pretty closely like the Feds. Got
Speaker 1: the Feds are administering a lot of the landscape, but
Speaker 1: the states are administering a lot of the wildlife a
Speaker 1: lands exactly, so decisions about land use and land management planning.
Speaker 1: We're very involved in that with the with the four
Speaker 1: Service and BLM, and you can spend a lot to
Speaker 1: have looking at sheep I do that is that unfortunate?
Speaker 1: Is that a high priority Um, i'd say yes, just
Speaker 1: conservation wise, Um, the tribe is is very interested in
Speaker 1: expanding UM populations of sheep. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: historically good sheep habitat and in those parts of the country. Um,
Speaker 1: you've been I think you've been to Hell's Canyon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I've gone out looking at big horns and that
Speaker 1: those populations have struggled. Um. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: good work that could be done, and so I think
Speaker 1: that's where our interest is. Um. Obviously there's you've probably
Speaker 1: heard about the mule deer issues that are going on.
Speaker 1: We have, we do have declines and mule deer populations,
Speaker 1: and but elk are pretty stable, large populations of elk
Speaker 1: in the Blue Mountains, which you'll get to see. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, sheep is a sort of our biggest conservation
Speaker 1: concern on on the big game front. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get ahead of ourselves. Was that because things are
Speaker 1: getting worse, because they could be so much better? Um.
Speaker 1: I think in our corner of the world there it's
Speaker 1: we're sort of at a stagnant stagnant sort of population
Speaker 1: has leveled off, So I think we could there's a
Speaker 1: lot we can improve. I think we can make some
Speaker 1: gains for sure, for sure, but we're not We haven't
Speaker 1: had a disease, a large die off in several years,
Speaker 1: but we're only a little ways away from one. We're
Speaker 1: always on the cusps. So I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of work we can do and this kind of forum
Speaker 1: is a good place to discuss that. And go ahead.
Speaker 1: Steve gray Thornton, I'm the president of CEO UM. We're
Speaker 1: here obviously at the at the World headquarters, but we
Speaker 1: also maintain offices and Cody. We have UM an education
Speaker 1: coordinator in Nevada. Clay is remote in Texas. We've got
Speaker 1: a lobbyist in Washington, d c. And in our Montana
Speaker 1: conservation director is also in Germany, so we we base
Speaker 1: international operations out of Germany. We work in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
Speaker 1: to Jakostan. Isn't it funny how everyone hates lobbyists, But
Speaker 1: lobbyists can come from any like people just like are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we lobbyists and you registered. That must be negative. But
Speaker 1: to think that they are like conservation lobbyists, you know,
Speaker 1: visional lobbyists, like some guy out to do something evil,
Speaker 1: you know he does he does he does smoke cigars,
Speaker 1: so he plays you know, he plays that lobbyist role. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we other lobbying on behalf of wild but
Speaker 1: he's lobbying on behalf of you know, wild sheep and
Speaker 1: wild Chief restoration. But you know, we called him our
Speaker 1: advocate and and our legislative affairs director and finally just
Speaker 1: just just call me a obvious. That's what everyone knows
Speaker 1: that I am. So you know, we just cut to
Speaker 1: the chase, and that's what he is. We were just
Speaker 1: I was just back with him two weeks ago, spent
Speaker 1: three days advocate advocating for big horn sheep programs and
Speaker 1: tin horn cheap programs. So when you when you guys
Speaker 1: are doing that, like when you're down in d c um,
Speaker 1: what are are you meeting with it? Do you tend
Speaker 1: to be meeting with individual politicians? Defind me meeting like
Speaker 1: more on the agency level both. So we we meet
Speaker 1: with the federal agencies. So all the Land Management U
Speaker 1: s U S four service. Most bighorn sheep live on
Speaker 1: uh US for SARS LAMB. But in claim what eighty
Speaker 1: somewhat percent of bighorn chep live on on the force
Speaker 1: um BLM. Interesting enough, as huge holdings in Alaska. Alaska's
Speaker 1: got of all doll sheep and thin horn sheep in
Speaker 1: North America, so pretty pretty huge population there, forty to
Speaker 1: fifty dollar sheep. Um. So we we you know, we
Speaker 1: meet with the BLM, we meet with a four service
Speaker 1: at times, will meet with the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
Speaker 1: at times, will meet with the National Park Service, and
Speaker 1: then on the hill will we'll meet with representatives and
Speaker 1: senators and their staff. So um, pretty pretty broad bay. See.
Speaker 1: The issues that we're dealing with are primarily land use issues, UM,
Speaker 1: some grazing issues and um separation issues between domestic sheep
Speaker 1: and bighorn sheep and now even sinhorn sheep. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: that that's why I'd like to get you in spensive time, Max.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's kind of seems like where so
Speaker 1: much of the conversation is right now around sheep. I
Speaker 1: want to do a little bit of backing up and
Speaker 1: I'll let you guys. You guys just kind of decide
Speaker 1: by making quick glances among each other to see who
Speaker 1: should handle what. But I want to like really quickly
Speaker 1: bring people up to speed on just like sheep taxonomy,
Speaker 1: which I think can be a little bit confusing. We
Speaker 1: don't need to go global. We'll just keep it North America.
Speaker 1: But is a fair to is like when you say,
Speaker 1: like bighorn thin horn, is that a fair? Is that
Speaker 1: a fair? If you're gonna take all of our country
Speaker 1: sheep or US and Canada, it makes some sort of division.
Speaker 1: It seems like people start with bighorn thin horn. You
Speaker 1: bet so, so you have you know, let's let's take
Speaker 1: North America's as Mexico, US and Canada perfect um so
Speaker 1: In in Mexico you have the desert bighorn sheep. Um
Speaker 1: in in the lower forty eight you have the rocky
Speaker 1: mountain bighorn sheep and the desert big worn sheep. Then
Speaker 1: we've got you know, there's kind of uh um splitters
Speaker 1: and lumpers. There's there's some divisions that come off of
Speaker 1: there's a California bighorn sheep that's really a rocky mountain
Speaker 1: and it didn't come from California, came from British Columbia
Speaker 1: of all places. Um, there's a Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep.
Speaker 1: There's a Peninsula desert bighorn sheep. So there's there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of kind of subspecies. But the bottom line is
Speaker 1: there's desert, big worn sheep, rocky mountain bighorn sheep, and
Speaker 1: then as we go north, you've got the stone sheep,
Speaker 1: which is primarily a Northern Britge Columbia and that's a
Speaker 1: thin horn sheep. That's a thin horn. And then the
Speaker 1: white sheep is a doll. So the stone sheep range
Speaker 1: in BC UM depends on the research you're looking at,
Speaker 1: but there's some new DNA studies that are that are
Speaker 1: pushing to the point that that's really the only place
Speaker 1: they are uh, and that the stone sheep, and we
Speaker 1: still call them that, but the stone sheep that are
Speaker 1: in in the Yukon territory are actually fan in sheep
Speaker 1: or just a a cross if you will, and dark
Speaker 1: pelliage of a cross between a white sheep a doll
Speaker 1: sheep and the stone sheep and the doll sheep are
Speaker 1: in Alaska, Yukon and Northwestern or just the color phase
Speaker 1: of the dolls. Yeah, which really irritates people because if
Speaker 1: you you know, you think you got your four North
Speaker 1: American wild cheep right, like that's a big thing. You
Speaker 1: want to get your desert, your rocky mountain your stones
Speaker 1: and your dolls. But you know they're starting to say
Speaker 1: and explain this to me earlier. Now they're going, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that dolls is just that, or that stones what
Speaker 1: you think is the stones is actually just a color
Speaker 1: phase of an actual doll. So would be like you
Speaker 1: going around and saying, man, yeah, I've I've shot a
Speaker 1: black bear and a grizzly bear, and then finding out
Speaker 1: actually your black bear was or your what you think
Speaker 1: was your grizzly bear or just a brown phase black bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you. But but like when you get up,
Speaker 1: I want to confuse myself, don't. I want to stay
Speaker 1: stay below the US Canada border for a minute. When
Speaker 1: you hear of the California, the California is a rocky,
Speaker 1: And then you hear in the old days that people
Speaker 1: have said either the Audubon was a rocky in the
Speaker 1: Missouri River bricks. We actually have an Audubon in our
Speaker 1: conference room now extinct, although there's some debate on that
Speaker 1: with with DNA, you know, the the DNA studies that
Speaker 1: we can do now and the research, you know, the
Speaker 1: samples we can use. Um, there's even some conflict of
Speaker 1: what or not the Audubon was truly a set brit
Speaker 1: substance that's I was reading about recently. But the bottom
Speaker 1: line is we've we've repatriated big horn sheep into the
Speaker 1: area that the Audubon was the Missouri River breaks, which
Speaker 1: just kind of the classic beautiful, big, rocky mountain sheep
Speaker 1: of of Montana. And then so now jump up into
Speaker 1: Canada and going up into Alaska, like at the time
Speaker 1: of European contact, would it just looked like one continuous
Speaker 1: string of sheep that just happened to get whiter the
Speaker 1: more farther north you went. Or were those populations like
Speaker 1: broken up? No, they were broken up, And um, you
Speaker 1: know there is there is certainly a difference between a
Speaker 1: bighorn sheep and a thin horn sheep. Um, so that
Speaker 1: the thin horn sheep and I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: latitude they're they're above, but um, you know those the
Speaker 1: stones and the dolls definitely look different than than a
Speaker 1: rocky mountain big horn, the rocky mountain bighorn or down
Speaker 1: in southern b c um, you know, the the front
Speaker 1: of the Rockies in Alberta, and then basically go down
Speaker 1: through the Dakotas a little bit in Nebraska, um Clay
Speaker 1: was just in Oklahoma. We now have a bighorn sheep
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma, um and then desert in Texas. And then
Speaker 1: you kind of as you go west, um and and
Speaker 1: and further south, you get into the deserts. But there's
Speaker 1: some some states that have both. Nevada has the Nelson Bighorn,
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain bighorn, and Colorado around I'm sorry California bighorn,
Speaker 1: but we really treat those. We treat the California and
Speaker 1: the Rocky is the same. If if you look at
Speaker 1: the work and how it was done. You know, everybody
Speaker 1: names something in the in the eighteen hundreds, they everybody
Speaker 1: threw a label on it. And and then there was
Speaker 1: a guy named Colwan about nineteen forty or so, uh
Speaker 1: that that actually maybe the sixties, Uh, I can't remember exactly,
Speaker 1: but anyway, he did a lot of the original work,
Speaker 1: and they were measuring skulls and horns and and look
Speaker 1: at it different ways. Well in the nineties, Uh, Rob
Speaker 1: Ramy and John wey Housing uh did some of that
Speaker 1: same work. And when it all came out, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the short and I tend to think simple
Speaker 1: and cheaper sheep. Uh, and and they described stones and
Speaker 1: dolls to the north. So it's really to two species
Speaker 1: rocky mountain or or big orange sheep to the south,
Speaker 1: and and uh, thin horns to the north. And then
Speaker 1: the subspecies they described three rocky mountains. They said California's
Speaker 1: are the same. And there's lots of discussion, a lot
Speaker 1: of states don't agree, and a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of folks go round and round over that. But then
Speaker 1: they were Sierra Nevada and deserts and uh, but there
Speaker 1: were they were measuring orbitals and taking various gold measurements
Speaker 1: and uh, this will be ironed out very soon that
Speaker 1: the genomics work that's occurring right now will answer every
Speaker 1: one of these questions. Just so just stand by. It's coming. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to watch the way the genetics work has changed,
Speaker 1: because when I was working on I was working in
Speaker 1: my book American Buffalo, and you read, you know, back
Speaker 1: a hundred years and people had there were seven different kinds,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was mostly just different people not
Speaker 1: orchestrating their activities. But we're seeing something somewhere and giving
Speaker 1: it a name, and seeing something somewhere giving it a name,
Speaker 1: and then always very eager to identify UH populations that
Speaker 1: weren't there anymore and have it be that it was
Speaker 1: something entirely different. In Texas, they had Texana, Uh, they
Speaker 1: felt they had a different subspecies in Texas. It was
Speaker 1: most likely Mexicana that subspecies, so it wasn't unique. But
Speaker 1: you'll still hear people talk about that, are there any
Speaker 1: places in uh? Are there any places in Canada where
Speaker 1: a big horn and a thin horn sheep would run
Speaker 1: into each other? You know, I've thought about that. In fact,
Speaker 1: we were kicking around that that very thing earlier and
Speaker 1: and it's uh, honestly no. But again, sheep or sheep, um?
Speaker 1: You know, they they uh for for what we know,
Speaker 1: the chances of them crossing paths probably slammed the none
Speaker 1: just the habitat that they use and those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: But they're like they're geographically separated by barriers that they're
Speaker 1: not likely to cross. You guys have some cool graphics
Speaker 1: in here that show what the where the popular the
Speaker 1: population distribution now relative to when things were really dire
Speaker 1: and bad, relative to when things were like relatively unexploited
Speaker 1: to what year do you have to go back um
Speaker 1: before you hit like what would have been kind of
Speaker 1: like pre contact baseline, meaning no extrapated like no extrapated regional,
Speaker 1: no regional extra pations. You know, that's that's a very
Speaker 1: tough question. There was a seaton in the earnest seaton, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, or were the numbers one point five to
Speaker 1: to millions something something so exactly, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: And and there are folks today that will they will
Speaker 1: argue with those numbers are a lot more effective in
Speaker 1: arguing those numbers than I am. At least the confidence
Speaker 1: intervals really wide on well exactly exactly, and so you
Speaker 1: know that that's a tough thing. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you try to read you know, some of
Speaker 1: the accounts Lewis and Clarks, and you know how much
Speaker 1: did they you know, they talked about many many animals.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means. Uh, but if you
Speaker 1: you know all the way, you you can trace some
Speaker 1: of that. It's particularly desert big horns, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds and things like that. When the kunky stators
Speaker 1: were traveling, you know, the missions, the priests described what
Speaker 1: they observed and it's so it's pretty interesting. But the
Speaker 1: numbers are always tough. Um. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at in the fifties, what we do know is that
Speaker 1: numbers have probably declined to about fifteen thousand, seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: animals something like that, So they got pretty low. So
Speaker 1: unless Seaton was wildly off, there was still a big reduction.
Speaker 1: It was a far more than their work today. You know,
Speaker 1: in terms of counting numbers. You guys familiar with how
Speaker 1: for a long time the fashionable number for bison was
Speaker 1: sixty million. And like you look into where that number
Speaker 1: came from, Well, Seaton kind of like collated the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but it came from basically a big herd going by.
Speaker 1: It seemed to take days to go by. Later, Colonel
Speaker 1: Dodge of Dodge City infamy has a conversation with another
Speaker 1: guy who saw the same thing, and hell, he must
Speaker 1: have been three miles away. And through this right comes
Speaker 1: this like wild estimation of how many there must be.
Speaker 1: So it is frustrating reading this book right now. Grizzlies
Speaker 1: in the Southwest, and the first part of the book
Speaker 1: is trying to collate all the cases or someone identified one,
Speaker 1: but you get into just terminology yep, and being like,
Speaker 1: is this what is this guy talking about like, what
Speaker 1: is you know, whoever's keeping records during the Coronado expedition.
Speaker 1: What is he talking about when he says X, is
Speaker 1: that what he means? And I don't know. I'll say
Speaker 1: to your story of the only Grizzly barri kill in Texas,
Speaker 1: I just read about that, yeah, in the Smithsonian, you know,
Speaker 1: so I can see that like exceedingly difficult to get
Speaker 1: a sense of what was where, but you could picture that.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's fair to say, like like you
Speaker 1: take like Nevada, you take Montana was like more of
Speaker 1: it was sheep country than not. Oh yeah, if you
Speaker 1: look at if you look at the mountains of Nevada
Speaker 1: and look how's laid out, and compare that to say Texas.
Speaker 1: You know, you can see just only the far west
Speaker 1: part of Texas. And if you look at at where
Speaker 1: Scott works, Uh, you know, just just some of the
Speaker 1: heritage the Native Americans have passed down the stories and
Speaker 1: picture as. We have a pretty good, good good idea
Speaker 1: where they occurred. Uh again that's interested just representational art. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like these people are drawing them so familiar with them.
Speaker 1: Same story of Texas. I can show you pictographs of
Speaker 1: big horn sheep in Texas that, uh, but but numbers
Speaker 1: we you know, it's it's it's an educated guest, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. I think it's a fair assumption to say
Speaker 1: that we had a lot of sheep and they were
Speaker 1: their distribution what's why they're they're the use of them
Speaker 1: culturally and and for materials and food was widespread. People
Speaker 1: were the first explorers were encountering big encountering big horn
Speaker 1: bows out waiting to Nebraska and out into the plains,
Speaker 1: the plains Indians were using bows man a big horn
Speaker 1: sheep horns, Now, wasn't it most common though, like right
Speaker 1: out of the park because they they were coming basically
Speaker 1: being traded for and you know, the the pictograph record
Speaker 1: is very widespread. So I think it's it's fair assumption
Speaker 1: to say we had a lot of sheep. They were
Speaker 1: widely distributed, Um a lot. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: cultures that were built around sheet um. And obviously I
Speaker 1: think you've probably read Journal of Trapper. I mean some
Speaker 1: of his descriptions. This is a guy that's seen Yellowstone
Speaker 1: Park area and it's sort of in prime form and
Speaker 1: using descriptions of immense numbers of mountain sheep in the
Speaker 1: winter time. So like I think someone that uses the
Speaker 1: word immense numbers, you know, this isn't a herd of
Speaker 1: or fifteen sheep on the side of a hill. It's
Speaker 1: the winter range was new rout. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of sheep there. Have you read Francis Parkman's Oregon Trail?
Speaker 1: I have not. So he he was a historian and
Speaker 1: he wrote like at the time, the definitive history of
Speaker 1: the French and Indian War. But he had health problems.
Speaker 1: It was told to come out and spend time out
Speaker 1: in the west, and he comes out and travels on
Speaker 1: the Oregon Trail. I think this is eighty six. He
Speaker 1: actually winds up traveling with the Oglala Sioux probably was
Speaker 1: in the same camp with Crazy Horse when Crazy Horse
Speaker 1: was thirteen. They go up into the Black Hills to
Speaker 1: get lodgepole pine for tent lodgepoles. The guys he's album
Speaker 1: with get onto a big herd of big horns and
Speaker 1: kill a bunch by throwing rocks down at them. So
Speaker 1: you get like, that's not too that's like a side.
Speaker 1: There must be like sizeable groups if that's your hunting strategies.
Speaker 1: The hurl rocks down and successfully kill a bunch those
Speaker 1: those kind of accounts that I think we're piecing all
Speaker 1: that that information to gather cultural accounts, early explorer accounts,
Speaker 1: we know what their range is in modern day we
Speaker 1: know how many sheep of the habitat can support, so
Speaker 1: we can kind of piece it together, you know, like
Speaker 1: what the numbers look like. So if you if you
Speaker 1: had to express like how bad it got, what's the
Speaker 1: best way to express how bad it? God? Because you
Speaker 1: could is it because you don't know the beginning numbers,
Speaker 1: So it's hard to do it numerically, Like how do
Speaker 1: you guys think about it? When you think about restoration?
Speaker 1: Is it filling in the map or is it achieving numbers? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of both. If you know, you
Speaker 1: look in your you're referencing to this map that we've
Speaker 1: got in our in our conference room, and you know,
Speaker 1: let's say, if we're using Seaton's numbers of you know,
Speaker 1: one to two million sheep, let's use a lower numb
Speaker 1: umber of one million um. You know, throughout North America
Speaker 1: we reduce those in the nineteen sixties down to twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand. So in what's now the US all the
Speaker 1: North North America, US, Canada, Mexico, bign Okay, so not
Speaker 1: not not because not the thin horns, the thin horn
Speaker 1: range is actually still distributions still pretty much the same
Speaker 1: because they haven't come up against like the obstacles. They haven't.
Speaker 1: Uh and that's and that's that's what you're trying to prevent.
Speaker 1: But but the big horns did. So you know, you're
Speaker 1: looking at you know, if it's five hundred or one million,
Speaker 1: or one point five or two million dollars, we are
Speaker 1: two million sheep. We reduced those numbers down to twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand by the late nineteen sixties. Today we're at
Speaker 1: about eighty five thousand big horn sheep in in Canada,
Speaker 1: US and Mexico, in all of North America. And at
Speaker 1: the I want to talk about why it got that way,
Speaker 1: But at the low a point with sheep, were you
Speaker 1: then finding that you had states I know we talked
Speaker 1: about Texas. Were there multiple states that had completely run out?
Speaker 1: You bet, you bet. You know if you look at
Speaker 1: you know, some of the data that will show you know,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll reference remnant population. Some were just gone. Texas gone.
Speaker 1: Um Nevada was down to a remnant population. They're they're
Speaker 1: an absolute incredible success store. You know they had they
Speaker 1: had a hundred or two hundred. You know, what does
Speaker 1: remnant mean? Two hundred sheep. They're up to eleven thousand
Speaker 1: desert big ones right now. They probably got about twelve
Speaker 1: thousand to thirteen thousand big one cheap in Nevada today,
Speaker 1: and they were down to what's called a remnant remnant
Speaker 1: one in venties, which would be sub one. So it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Um, what states are like the big holdouts
Speaker 1: wym means strong states. Troma did pretty well. Um, I
Speaker 1: think Montana did pretty well. Hanging all around them pretty well.
Speaker 1: But still who was who was housing? Uh? What states
Speaker 1: provided the last refugia for the deserts desert big horns? Like?
Speaker 1: What states? What had like wound up one of all
Speaker 1: the smoke clear clay Arizona, New Mexico didn't. No, New
Speaker 1: Mexico was down. So they were way down pretty much
Speaker 1: pretty much Mexico and in Arizona, California. You know they
Speaker 1: I don't remember, hello the numbers got in California. Uh,
Speaker 1: Nevada's got I mean most of them are remnant. It
Speaker 1: was rough and Mexico held onto some actually co did
Speaker 1: um in the Sierra Madre where you know most of
Speaker 1: it was just well in the Bajaah so yeah, because
Speaker 1: Baja Man. Like as far as like representational art, yeah,
Speaker 1: tah North. I've been spent time down there. Man. There's
Speaker 1: tons of picto grass, big big horns in held here,
Speaker 1: you know, and they've and they've held their own even today.
Speaker 1: I mean they've they do pretty well. Um. I mean
Speaker 1: there are a lot of sheep uh in Sonora alone.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the numbers exactly, but there are probably
Speaker 1: in so Norma, Mexico alone, probably just in that state.
Speaker 1: And then we hunt down I never run into one.
Speaker 1: Must be the wrong part of the Um. What was
Speaker 1: the dry like I kind of already know this answer
Speaker 1: because I know it was like disease and pot hunting,
Speaker 1: like what made it so bad? Like how did it
Speaker 1: get so bad? Well, there were there were lots of things,
Speaker 1: the combination of things, um, civilization, railroads were moving in
Speaker 1: the blanket term uh and all the wonders that it brings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Scott can speak to this stuff a little
Speaker 1: bit further north. And but as far as the stuff
Speaker 1: in in the south, you know, if you read Texas history,
Speaker 1: the railroad came through, and you'd read a counch where
Speaker 1: you know they were feeding railroad workers. Uh. And a
Speaker 1: guy would hunt meat for the railroads and he would
Speaker 1: hit the hit hit where our prime habitat is and
Speaker 1: he would say that had him in a box canyon
Speaker 1: and I got every one of them. And and so
Speaker 1: he would take the meat back feed railroad workers. But
Speaker 1: it was disease issues and a competition for forage and
Speaker 1: limited water and forage with with domestic livestock that it
Speaker 1: that had come in later, and and people were trying
Speaker 1: to feed their families. It was tough places to to
Speaker 1: make a living. So if you if you break out,
Speaker 1: let's see you break out market hunting. Um. And who's
Speaker 1: that famous photographer that used to work out a mile city,
Speaker 1: Uh Hoffman l A. Hoffman. He was taking pictures in
Speaker 1: the early eighteen eighties of market hunter camps where they
Speaker 1: had this all kinds of big horns lined up to
Speaker 1: their killing along the Yellowstone. But if you're gonna take out,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna divide it, like, let's say you had
Speaker 1: habitat issues, Okay, so crazy comp this and water whatever,
Speaker 1: market hunting and disease are are they teared out or
Speaker 1: they all just equal players? Oh no, it's if typically,
Speaker 1: if you if you're trying to piece the story together
Speaker 1: that's got described, you typically look at land use history
Speaker 1: and you look at look at how things occurred or
Speaker 1: what might have occurred. And today the greatest obstacle that
Speaker 1: we face is disease. And so chances are that was
Speaker 1: the greatest threat, the thing that caused the most problems
Speaker 1: in the in the eighteen hundreds, uh, along with those
Speaker 1: other things. But but in in my view, it would
Speaker 1: be diseases uh and competition for forage UM and limited
Speaker 1: water in the desert environment. Anyway, Yeah, that's totally very UM.
Speaker 1: Just to give you a perspective, like if you think
Speaker 1: about it, and in terms of grazing and UM, just
Speaker 1: use the northeast organ exam ample that that corner of
Speaker 1: Oregon Williwa County where Health Canyon is located, there was
Speaker 1: about the turn of century there was three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: sheep grazing in that county. Yes, yep, so there was
Speaker 1: an immense number of sheep domestic sheep and sorry, the
Speaker 1: three hundred domestics grazing in Williwa County. So that was
Speaker 1: a county alone dostic sheep. So we're you know, obviously
Speaker 1: it was great grazing land for domestic sheep, and so
Speaker 1: people were grazing. There was no tailor grazing act. It
Speaker 1: was sort of a free for all in the public
Speaker 1: land system, which is you know, probably not fully established
Speaker 1: at that time. Um. And we had a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of domestics right in the Big Horn habitat.
Speaker 1: So we should probably talk about the diza like disease.
Speaker 1: When we say disease carried them off. Is it a
Speaker 1: host of diseases that hits Big Horns or is it
Speaker 1: a disease it hits big Horns. It is a disease complex.
Speaker 1: So there's clay can fill in the gaps, But there's
Speaker 1: based on our last decade of research. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been an evolving story over time where people are constantly
Speaker 1: learning new information all the time. Is our techniques and
Speaker 1: science get better and and our experimentation gets better and
Speaker 1: our insights get a bit get better. Um. But what
Speaker 1: all the research points to now is it's one particular
Speaker 1: bacteria that these are are. North American sheep did not
Speaker 1: evolve with so they're hosted by the domestic species. When
Speaker 1: they come in contact with each other, the big horn
Speaker 1: sheep contract that bacteria. They're no longer able to fight
Speaker 1: off other infections, so it compromises their sillia in their
Speaker 1: in their trachea, so they aren't able to move all
Speaker 1: their bacteria out and they succumb to basically pneumonia but
Speaker 1: from other whether it's a back you know, but my
Speaker 1: probably microbial disease, it's the term. So they're very naive
Speaker 1: to this disease. The the mo it's called microplazma ovi pneumonia,
Speaker 1: so we call mo BE for short and m O
Speaker 1: V period ov um and and this this is a
Speaker 1: disease that seems to have originated in a real sheep
Speaker 1: in Europe. They perhaps were exposed to it for the
Speaker 1: correct so they carry it. They're they're not clinically affected
Speaker 1: by we don't see the same symptoms that we do
Speaker 1: in big horns or their coffee and or having nasal
Speaker 1: sinus discharge um. So it doesn't appear to have a
Speaker 1: strong population level effect or no population level effect and
Speaker 1: domestic sheep, so some lambs will succumb to it, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, once they're kind of getting close to weaning,
Speaker 1: but our bighorn sheep lambs will be infected early on,
Speaker 1: and it's it's very fatal. And the strains there's there's
Speaker 1: many strains, they're all they have different severity and the
Speaker 1: reactions within big horn population. So it's it's a complicated
Speaker 1: disease issue. And that's why it's taken us so long
Speaker 1: to sort this all lout. So was was this disease
Speaker 1: hitting big horns before anybody knew that this disease? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just as like, I don't know what happened to
Speaker 1: them all. I mean, if you think about the habitat
Speaker 1: that these animals live in, how frequently do we how
Speaker 1: how well studied our hearts now with our with our
Speaker 1: level of technology and their dedication, But back in the
Speaker 1: eight hundreds, I know that I don't know how many
Speaker 1: people were looking at him you look, um, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know a great analogy would be looking at what we
Speaker 1: did to Native American tribes with smallpox. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's so similar. Um. And when we talk about micro
Speaker 1: plasma oa pneumonia as a setup agent, um, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of in in in lay terms, even though they're
Speaker 1: not the same. You know, it's it's kind of HIV
Speaker 1: and sheep uh. You know, HIV is an immune deficiency.
Speaker 1: This is not This is a bacterium. It's a path
Speaker 1: a pathogen, but it's a setup agent. So um. You
Speaker 1: know you Joe was thirty two years old and you
Speaker 1: heard he died of pneumonia, and you go, my god,
Speaker 1: you know, Joe is thirty two years old. I was
Speaker 1: a thirty two year old guy died of pneumonia. Oh well,
Speaker 1: you know he had AIDS, HIV and compromises immune system
Speaker 1: and he got pneumonia died very similar to what's happening
Speaker 1: with sheep is. As Scott had pointed out that the
Speaker 1: microplasmo pneumonia iMovie lays down the cilia in the esophagus
Speaker 1: uh and allows other other bugs, other pathogens, other other
Speaker 1: other bacteria to get down into the lungs. They can't
Speaker 1: cough it out, the silly is not moving it out.
Speaker 1: They get sick and then we you know what we
Speaker 1: used to say, as well, they died of pneumonia. Well,
Speaker 1: actually they probably died of something else. But imovis. As
Speaker 1: we're able to study it more and more and more,
Speaker 1: m O VI was present there's there's a litany of
Speaker 1: other pathogens uh Mannheimia, hemolytica. There's there's new research that
Speaker 1: is looking at um nasal tumors. Is. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: these these sheep, which a mountain sheep. When you look
Speaker 1: at where they live, uh in some of the harshest
Speaker 1: climates in North America. Uh some of the most unique
Speaker 1: climates in North America. The sad thing is is from
Speaker 1: a from a respiratory standpoint, they're pretty darn weak. Um.
Speaker 1: Our Vice president of Conservation Kevin Hurley says that I
Speaker 1: think pretty pretty succinctly says, the damned things are born
Speaker 1: looking for a place to die. UM. So there, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's it's challenging. UM. It is a
Speaker 1: disease complex. And and every time we we you know,
Speaker 1: Wild Chief Foundations spent millions and millions of dollars into
Speaker 1: disease research. We endow a share of wild cheap disease
Speaker 1: at Washington to Date University. UM. Every rock we overturned
Speaker 1: that we think we've got the solution, we this is
Speaker 1: this is it, this is now. Now there's four other
Speaker 1: rocks underneath it that we un you know, unturned or
Speaker 1: overturned those and there's four more other questions that we
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to. So I want to explore
Speaker 1: the timeline a little bit on on the numbers collapsing.
Speaker 1: But no one really knew where we started. No one
Speaker 1: had done like this exhaustive analysis of where sheep exists
Speaker 1: and how many there were. But it's just like any
Speaker 1: anyone who's paying attention can't miss the fact that they're vanishing.
Speaker 1: At what point do people like this organization or other
Speaker 1: individuals or state agencies, at what point do people go like, wow,
Speaker 1: we need to get on top of this and start
Speaker 1: taking some step And at that time did they were
Speaker 1: they then aware of what was causing the problem? Were
Speaker 1: people doing restoration? And then all the sheep die again
Speaker 1: without even knowing that the real issue was disease, thinking
Speaker 1: it might have been something else. Is that like that
Speaker 1: question makes sense? It absolute good question. Clay and Scott
Speaker 1: can remember, you know, we were we were probably putting
Speaker 1: six sheep into clean sheep, so we were we were
Speaker 1: making some errors back because we just we just didn't
Speaker 1: know we were you know, we didn't know that that
Speaker 1: that sourcerd had mica plasma o pneumonia. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: we plopped in no doubt in transplants, we prop plopped
Speaker 1: in six sheep on top of clean sheet. So that
Speaker 1: became the that became the primary restoration tools. Transplanting sheep
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely the early years was protection. Every state nineteen
Speaker 1: o five, nineteen ten, nineteen o three, every state implemented something. Uh.
Speaker 1: The first translocation occurred in nineteen twenty two. Uh. Since
Speaker 1: then there have been probably close to fifteen hundred separate
Speaker 1: operations removing somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty two thousand
Speaker 1: animals that have been moved from one place to another.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o three in Texas, they're like, it's bad enough,
Speaker 1: you can't kill one. And it wasn't just cheap. Keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. It was muled here and pronghorn and
Speaker 1: in all wild life in those days. I mean everything
Speaker 1: was suffering. But uh, but it was, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. The tool translocations was that was the tool. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we would go we worked with Nevada Department
Speaker 1: of Wildlife and we would we would trap sheep on
Speaker 1: the landscape. I would be on the side of a mountain.
Speaker 1: We would trap sheep. Uh. We had a trailer, double
Speaker 1: decker trailer. Feel that trailer full as many as many
Speaker 1: cheap as they would give us, and then as fast
Speaker 1: as we could get back into the turkey, give them
Speaker 1: a handful of turkeys and and uh no, no, uh,
Speaker 1: give them what whatever it was they wanted, because we
Speaker 1: were beggars, that was the bottom line were at that time.
Speaker 1: So so anyway, go back to Texas in twenty four
Speaker 1: hours later, dumping them on the landscape. Well, we were
Speaker 1: drawing blood samples, but we would never wait for the
Speaker 1: results of those samples. Uh So if something would have happened,
Speaker 1: the cat would have been out out of the back
Speaker 1: by then. So now now we we sample source and
Speaker 1: recipient populations in advance, and we look at those kind
Speaker 1: of things. So we're a lot smarter in the way
Speaker 1: we do business. That's a horrible thought to think of,
Speaker 1: just out of out of a very excusable form of
Speaker 1: ignorance to spend that time and energy. Oh, there's no
Speaker 1: doubt in fact a clean herd. Yeah, there there's no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. Because if you look at in the
Speaker 1: disease itself, it you know that it can only come
Speaker 1: from a live animal and there's there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Now that can be domestic cheap, domestic goats, but it
Speaker 1: can also be bigger horn cheap, and it can also
Speaker 1: be uh, wild goats. So that that bacteria doesn't do
Speaker 1: well laying on the dirt. No, it does not, it does.
Speaker 1: It has to come it comes from a life source.
Speaker 1: So but we've again how how close, Like let's talk
Speaker 1: about Trent, let's talk about the transmission for a minute.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna let out of a
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, but yeah, because because it's not what you understood,
Speaker 1: I'm just talking like, Okay, you gotta sick. But let's
Speaker 1: not even bring in domestic you don't have to touch noses.
Speaker 1: Let's just it's but the pens are too close together.
Speaker 1: They you know, w s U has a captive herd
Speaker 1: and they got them. I think one of the early
Speaker 1: trials they got a little too close to their clean
Speaker 1: sheet from the six sheets. We're talking inches or feet
Speaker 1: or yard feet yards, you're talking about in some cases
Speaker 1: maybe kilometers. Uh. If that's the case, then what do
Speaker 1: you mean then, like, what do you mean that has
Speaker 1: to go from sheet to sheep? Because it's just a yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's that's let's go back to the IF. If
Speaker 1: you look at the IF, the issues associated with this disease,
Speaker 1: I mean when when when it comes down to it,
Speaker 1: oh oh, wildlife they adapt to the various pathogens that
Speaker 1: they're induced to in some form or fashion. And so
Speaker 1: how to affects bighorn sheep is you need to have
Speaker 1: a complete die off. I mean they just do terrible uh.
Speaker 1: Or you see it where you know, a mother will
Speaker 1: pass down out of bodies two two lambs, and and
Speaker 1: at first, you know, when you when you see them
Speaker 1: the first few weeks of life, they seem to do
Speaker 1: pretty well. But about eight weeks, eight to twelve weeks, uh,
Speaker 1: something like that, then then you start seeing issues and
Speaker 1: then you have complete lamb die off. So so in
Speaker 1: other words, you have complete die offs, then you have
Speaker 1: no recruitment for decades. And then the other part of
Speaker 1: that is that you have some sheep that for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they don't die and they go from her to her,
Speaker 1: from this one to the typhoid mary that so they
Speaker 1: become a carrier, that is a carrier that sheds that
Speaker 1: disease to other population. And so bighorn sheep move, they move,
Speaker 1: and the other thing is there. They are long lived
Speaker 1: species generally in absence of disease. You know, you just
Speaker 1: can live close to twenty years and rams are you know,
Speaker 1: kind of the ten to twelve is a long long
Speaker 1: live ram. So some of these particular carriers can be
Speaker 1: alive for a long time, moving around and keeping that
Speaker 1: disease in the herd, and it's not able to fade out.
Speaker 1: How much do you guys see? Uh, how much have
Speaker 1: you seen big horns move? Like, don't give me the no.
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in the crazy number, but the number
Speaker 1: the normal and then and then it hit me with
Speaker 1: a crazy number. Okay. So the the number that we're
Speaker 1: using based on sort of this estimation from telemetry data
Speaker 1: that was sort of a published a model that we
Speaker 1: use for sort of risk of contact modeling. So how
Speaker 1: likely our big horn sheep gonna go out and landscape
Speaker 1: and contact a particular distance from their home range? Right,
Speaker 1: So all animals set up a home range. Generally, big
Speaker 1: horn sheep do exploratory movements where they leave their home
Speaker 1: range and then may return. So whether it's to see
Speaker 1: what's going on on the next ridge or to look
Speaker 1: for receptive use, but generally the number there is thirty
Speaker 1: five kilometers. So basically of RAM movements over a fourteen
Speaker 1: year data set showed that almost those movements were within
Speaker 1: thirty five kilometers from their home range. How big this
Speaker 1: core zone? If that varies. It could be, it could
Speaker 1: be larger, could be it could be tight habitat and
Speaker 1: particular individual So some individuals may have small home ranges,
Speaker 1: some might have larger. So the crazy number is a
Speaker 1: little ram that came out of the lost in Herd
Speaker 1: just this past couple of years and near Joseph, Oregon
Speaker 1: or Enterprise and Joseph up in the Allowa Range. So
Speaker 1: he took a little walk and he went on a loop,
Speaker 1: so they were they collared him. He showed up, i
Speaker 1: think on somebody's deck and it was just take and
Speaker 1: he took a good photo and they recognized send him
Speaker 1: the Hell's Canyon Initiative folks, and they recognize him as
Speaker 1: twelve l O seven. Hey, that's so we ear tagged
Speaker 1: him as a lamp. So they knew that they had
Speaker 1: a definitive age on him. And he went across the
Speaker 1: Snake River, the Salmon River and then over into the
Speaker 1: Clearwater drainage in Idaho and then put a collar on
Speaker 1: him at some point and actually put three collars on
Speaker 1: them because they kept failing. So he got caught two
Speaker 1: or three times with the helicopter, and I think he
Speaker 1: got darted once. So and he made a three and
Speaker 1: seventy eight mile loop through seven different home ranges of
Speaker 1: big Horns, and he was out in some weak fields
Speaker 1: and crossed a bunch of highways. And so he went
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty five miles from his home range and
Speaker 1: covered in that year and a half time or so
Speaker 1: with the collar, he covered three seventy eight miles and
Speaker 1: then died on a remote point in Hell's Canyon, natural
Speaker 1: causes for presumably that it it was during thing was during
Speaker 1: the winter, so they couldn't get in there with any
Speaker 1: other website the jet boat. So I don't remember how
Speaker 1: long it was when the collar went on mortality until
Speaker 1: they wentn't recovered it, so he just went on a crew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean it kind of just demonstrates the behavior
Speaker 1: potential of these animals that some of them are going
Speaker 1: to move and they show up in town. You know,
Speaker 1: when when you're when you have a civilization at the
Speaker 1: bottom of a nice canyon that joins up to another
Speaker 1: big canyon they're going to come through, And it happens
Speaker 1: pretty regularly, especially in that in that landscape of health.
Speaker 1: Ganyon lower heuse Ganyon. Yeah, so this brings up like
Speaker 1: that brings up a big question. So how we have
Speaker 1: really set up like what needs to happen here? If
Speaker 1: we know what needs to happen. But if they're gonna
Speaker 1: go do that, how do you ever protect them from
Speaker 1: picking up transmittable diseases and spread them to everybody else?
Speaker 1: That's a million dollar question. Well, when Steve, the protocol
Speaker 1: of many Western states is when a bighorn sheep comes
Speaker 1: in contact with domestic sheep, that bighorn sheep is shot.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a standing acting protocol because the fear
Speaker 1: is that that big horn could then be the you know,
Speaker 1: the vector and as as you know this this damn
Speaker 1: ram did I mean goes on a walk about and
Speaker 1: and could have gone through a whole bunch of hers,
Speaker 1: So you know, kind of the standard protocol, it would
Speaker 1: be the administrative. Yeah, you would kill like a state
Speaker 1: age she would kill. That would and they're trying, they're
Speaker 1: trying to get away from that where possible, so that
Speaker 1: just the setup I was talking about where some animals
Speaker 1: will show up and say that, you know a town
Speaker 1: along the Snake River where there's big horn habitat on
Speaker 1: all sides, and they show up in town, and you know,
Speaker 1: generally the the old method was let's just let's remove
Speaker 1: this animal so it can't go back, and and they're
Speaker 1: removing it for the express purpose to protect that this
Speaker 1: could have It could have picked up pneumonia, it could
Speaker 1: have contact, especially if it was seen obvious ones that
Speaker 1: are document in a pasture with domestic sheep, domestic goats
Speaker 1: you know most of the time, or but what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do now is based on the proximity to
Speaker 1: w s US that we try to put you know,
Speaker 1: dark the animal live, capture it, then holding test or else,
Speaker 1: take it to the w s A w s U
Speaker 1: facility and then becomes to research animal. Basically, I'd like
Speaker 1: to this. This was like my big AHA moment when
Speaker 1: I came here, right I was sitting with our biologists
Speaker 1: across the hall and and he just kind of said
Speaker 1: it like it was just something that that just happens.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, so you're telling me I could go
Speaker 1: get a grazing permit for my domestic sheep going to
Speaker 1: public land and then that wild cheap comes down and
Speaker 1: boom they shoot it and it does you know. So
Speaker 1: we see in the breaks um a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago there was two young rams. They went within three
Speaker 1: quarters of a mile of a domestic sheepherden. Boom they
Speaker 1: were shot. But yep, yep because of them being a vector.
Speaker 1: So what's like, what's your do you guys have a
Speaker 1: official stance on the practice? Because there an alternative to that,
Speaker 1: I mean, just to that part of it right there. Now.
Speaker 1: We we we you know, our are our objective is
Speaker 1: to keep the two species separate. So um, if there's
Speaker 1: non contact, you know, if you can send them off
Speaker 1: to w s U or send them off to sabille
Speaker 1: In in Wyoming, great um. But you know you think
Speaker 1: about that, that's also a death sense. You know, they're
Speaker 1: going to now be a guinea pig for disease testing. Um.
Speaker 1: So that you know that there's really not much we
Speaker 1: can do other than keep the two separated. So you know,
Speaker 1: we circle back to Washington, d C. You know, that's
Speaker 1: what we're advocating for back in Washington, d c IS
Speaker 1: is federal land managers and agencies to to work for
Speaker 1: spatial and temporal separation of of wild sheep and domestic sheep.
Speaker 1: What does that need to look like? I can I
Speaker 1: can imagine where it becomes contentious. Could you mind like
Speaker 1: sketching out the obvious and how does that become a
Speaker 1: contentious conversation? Well? You you know, you got I was.
Speaker 1: I was just back there with a with a producer
Speaker 1: who's who's this is domestic sheep producer. He's the largest
Speaker 1: public land domestic sheep producer in uh in Montana. He's
Speaker 1: a good guy, uh and he gets it and he
Speaker 1: uh he does his best to keep his domestic sheep
Speaker 1: away from wild sheep um and he wants more wild
Speaker 1: sheep on on Montana's mountains. But you know, the the
Speaker 1: issue there's um litigation. Uh. Whild she Foundations really not
Speaker 1: a litigant type organization. We we we feel we'd rather sit
Speaker 1: around the table and and and workout solutions. So you know,
Speaker 1: our our objective there, Steve, would be to sit down
Speaker 1: with that producer and go all right, Uh. You know
Speaker 1: the Western way of doing things is having a whiskey
Speaker 1: chatting ig olloging that there's an issue first and foremost
Speaker 1: and then looking for solutions. Is it is at times
Speaker 1: of year when when a producer's trailing through an area,
Speaker 1: UH is it is it how he uses or she
Speaker 1: uses the the upper allotments or you know these high
Speaker 1: mountain allotments. So UM, we've we've done various programs in
Speaker 1: various states. There's a few states that have very good
Speaker 1: collaboratives where you have a wild sheep and domestic sheep
Speaker 1: UH interaction working group. UH. We don't always agree, but
Speaker 1: we sit around a table once or twice a year
Speaker 1: and say, let's, you know, let's come up with solutions
Speaker 1: that we can UH, we can, we can work this out.
Speaker 1: Doesn't work everywhere. UM. You know wild sheep foundations of
Speaker 1: official position as we want healthy and UH expanding wild
Speaker 1: sheep herds UM, but we also support a vibrant domestic
Speaker 1: sheep industry. The key is there's often places that just
Speaker 1: absolutely incompatible in the same landscape. UM. We have worked
Speaker 1: with um permitees to convert if it's a high conflict area,
Speaker 1: you've got a large population of big horn sheep, large
Speaker 1: population of domestic sheep, and we know there's going to
Speaker 1: be contact. We've worked with some producers to convert them
Speaker 1: to cattle were appropriate. Uh. There have been situations where
Speaker 1: we've worked with producers to pay them almost like a
Speaker 1: CRP program in the Midwest, but pay them to retire
Speaker 1: their allotment or vacate their lot, just to look at like,
Speaker 1: what would you make in profits running sheep? Can we
Speaker 1: take conservation dollars and we'll pay you to not do it?
Speaker 1: We take private conservation dollars to pay it and not
Speaker 1: do it. We just have you have a willing seller,
Speaker 1: willing absolutely and we you know, we we paid a
Speaker 1: just because we're these These deals are typically confidential, so
Speaker 1: I won't even mention the state, but we we pay
Speaker 1: to produce or four seven thousand dollars to vacate uh
Speaker 1: their allotment. Um. They were also in getting into trouble
Speaker 1: with grizzly bears and wolves. Uh constant constant problem. So
Speaker 1: uh the expansion of grizzly bears and expansion of of
Speaker 1: of wolves has in some ways benefited big horn sheep
Speaker 1: in some states because the primitives want to get get
Speaker 1: the hell out of there, and they come to NGOs
Speaker 1: like Wild Chief Foundation and say can you give us
Speaker 1: a hand, and we do, and we do, and we've
Speaker 1: spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars doing that,
Speaker 1: and you nailed it on a willing seller, willing buyer deal.
Speaker 1: But what does it look like? You're talking about big
Speaker 1: organized producers okay, who presumably have kind of like a
Speaker 1: business sensibility, they have a sense of profit loss. But
Speaker 1: what about all the people that just have two or
Speaker 1: three sheep? Excellent? How do you even know who they are?
Speaker 1: Excellent question, because I mean I could go like my brother,
Speaker 1: he has lived and he doesn't formally big Orange country.
Speaker 1: He's got some sheep, He's got ten acres that irrigated pasture,
Speaker 1: he's got sheep out there. There's nothing to prevent him
Speaker 1: from having a buddy come over and say, hey man,
Speaker 1: I'd love to have a lamp for my place. Nothing.
Speaker 1: There's no paperwork. So the key, the key key there
Speaker 1: is education, you know. So I mean on this on
Speaker 1: this podcast, I mean we're we're gonna be educating people
Speaker 1: that there's an issue. Um you know, Uh, I came
Speaker 1: from Texas and I go down to to Houston and
Speaker 1: I gave a presentation, I talked, I talked about the
Speaker 1: disease issue into a hunting community that you would presume
Speaker 1: would would know something about it, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: blank stairs. I've never heard of it, um, truth be told.
Speaker 1: I came to the Wild Chief Foundation for Dallas of
Speaker 1: Fark Club, I wasn't aware of it. I've been in
Speaker 1: the Huntington conservation industry for eighteen years. I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: about it. So it's it's it's education. Um. While she
Speaker 1: foundation obviously respects private landowners, um you know, respects private
Speaker 1: land rights, uh and your ability to do what you
Speaker 1: you want on your land. But um, you know, our
Speaker 1: our our effort there would be to educate those private
Speaker 1: landowners or those recreational producers or hobby flocks or whatever
Speaker 1: you want. Four h um f a a lot of
Speaker 1: four h animals out there that could get in trouble.
Speaker 1: Educate them. UM. I just I just spent two years,
Speaker 1: two days on the Missouri River with a UM private
Speaker 1: producer in southern BC who gets it, um. And interesting enough,
Speaker 1: he's got a small flock of domestic cheap they're actually
Speaker 1: mouflan sheep, and he's in proximity to Big Horn habitat
Speaker 1: and he's a part of an Internet interaction working group
Speaker 1: in Southern BC, and he was the guy that asked
Speaker 1: the question of them. He goes, well, why don't I,
Speaker 1: as a producer, test my sheep for amovie? He did,
Speaker 1: and he's got a nemovie free flock and he's now
Speaker 1: one of our biggest advocates as a domestic sheep producer
Speaker 1: for amovie free flock. So that would be potentially one
Speaker 1: of the solutions. And that's pretty interesting to think about
Speaker 1: because I mean, you know, a lot of states have
Speaker 1: managed to get brucellosis out of livestock hurts. Is that
Speaker 1: an area of interest to think that you could expand
Speaker 1: absolutely well, they would, you know, they would be amovie
Speaker 1: free sheep. There's a doctor Tom Besser who's our Rocky
Speaker 1: Crate Endowed Charities at Washington State University, probably one of
Speaker 1: the world's foremost experts on this issue, and he's advised
Speaker 1: us that if you have an iMovie free domestic flock,
Speaker 1: that's about a nineties seven percent solution to this issue.
Speaker 1: So that that is exciting. UM, But there's a fly
Speaker 1: in the ointment Scott. Scott just talked about that ram
Speaker 1: that did a three hundred some odd mile walk about.
Speaker 1: So we've got you know, we we know that um
Speaker 1: iMovie is not endemic to bighorn sheep, but in iMovie
Speaker 1: is now resident in bighorn sheep. So we have herds
Speaker 1: and you know we're in Montana, so we have herds
Speaker 1: in Montana that they test positive for iMovie UM. As
Speaker 1: Scott pointed out, there's a variety of strains. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like the you know, not necessarily but again Layman's terms,
Speaker 1: kind of like the flu or the cold. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get one hell of a common cold. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you get a little light one. Sometimes you get a flue.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a flu virus that you know that
Speaker 1: just wipes you out. Other times it's not so bad.
Speaker 1: The same thing with you know, strains of iMovie. Uh,
Speaker 1: this this big horn may be able to live with it. Well,
Speaker 1: now here's the fly in the ointment. What if we
Speaker 1: have a private land domestic sheep producer doing the right
Speaker 1: thing to tons of money testing his or her sheep.
Speaker 1: They're a movie free they make sure they only bring
Speaker 1: in stock from amovie free. And we got a wandering
Speaker 1: bighorn that's a movie positive. Now we've now we've switched
Speaker 1: the dynamic there, and you know that the fact is
Speaker 1: we've got to be intellectually honest and go We're still
Speaker 1: back into a separation scenario now, we're trying to separate
Speaker 1: you know, these iMovie free clean domestic sheep from a
Speaker 1: potentially UM infected wild sheep. The truth of the matter,
Speaker 1: if we were gonna have to think different, we we
Speaker 1: can't continue to do the way we've done in the past.
Speaker 1: And I think there are opportunities that we missed UM
Speaker 1: and I want to emphasize the work that was done.
Speaker 1: Great Gray mentioned private landowners earlier. We restored bighorn sheep
Speaker 1: in Texas with private landowners because you didn't have a
Speaker 1: choice there. Absolutely absolutely so we figured out a way
Speaker 1: to do this together. And these are these are people
Speaker 1: who care and and our goal is certainly not to
Speaker 1: put people out of business. Uh. To me, the way
Speaker 1: we do this is we figure out new solutions, better
Speaker 1: way of doing business. We sit out at the same table.
Speaker 1: We don't play the politics. We we we stopped denying
Speaker 1: that the disease exists. It's it's real. You asked me
Speaker 1: a question, or ask us all a question earlier. Didn't
Speaker 1: you have any ideas you what's those numbers decline? Everybody
Speaker 1: had a thought, they had a pretty good idea why
Speaker 1: it just never was demonstrated or proven. And and later
Speaker 1: on that information came in a controlled experiment and where
Speaker 1: we where we knew that it that it did occur.
Speaker 1: And then the question it became, well, that didn't really
Speaker 1: occur in the wild. Uh, you guys did that in
Speaker 1: a controlled setting? It really doesn't occur in the wild.
Speaker 1: It does. So the first the first thing we have
Speaker 1: to do is acknowledge that we've got a problem, and
Speaker 1: then we start working together. And Grace says it best.
Speaker 1: He talks about, you know, it's okay to have both
Speaker 1: on the landscape, they just can't be there at the
Speaker 1: same time, at the same place. And so we have
Speaker 1: to figure out what that what that does look like. Uh,
Speaker 1: but we are going to have to think outside the box.
Speaker 1: How you know, how do how do we do things?
Speaker 1: Is it? I know? And and and probably will suck
Speaker 1: the air out of this room. But we allow private
Speaker 1: landowners in Texas to benefit from sheep tags. There's an
Speaker 1: incentive there for landowners to work with us, and it's
Speaker 1: work extremely well. Um landowners are willing to do whatever
Speaker 1: it takes, we conduct we uh. Landowners allow public hunters
Speaker 1: on their property to hunt. UH, we hunt each other's property.
Speaker 1: We we do research, We capture sheep on private land.
Speaker 1: So there are lots of other examples. That's just like
Speaker 1: in that mob, you're going for a thing where you're
Speaker 1: trying to change the landowner perception of what it means
Speaker 1: to have sheep. It's not just like you're screwed now,
Speaker 1: a buddy, there's a sheep on your property, exactly, and
Speaker 1: you'll never as a private landowner or a producer. Why
Speaker 1: would I care if there were sheep bigger and cheap
Speaker 1: around here? If I saw no benefit from that? And
Speaker 1: so I think there are opportunities that we haven't explored
Speaker 1: that we need to. We need to sit down on
Speaker 1: the at the same table work through some of these issues.
Speaker 1: But but we can't do that if we don't acknowledge
Speaker 1: that the disease exists, and if if every time something
Speaker 1: major happens or an obstacle comes up a stumbling block,
Speaker 1: we run straight to d C. Are there are there
Speaker 1: pneumonia deniers? Oh? Absolutely, It seems to be a common
Speaker 1: theme across the handful of CD deniers. Absolutely, well, there's
Speaker 1: deniers and then there's users of you know, we've seen
Speaker 1: it uses a leveraging tool when they know that we'll
Speaker 1: pay to play. Hey, you know, hey, we're gonna bring
Speaker 1: in some domestics in here. What do you think of that?
Speaker 1: Or you know there's a guy in in gardener somewhere. Um,
Speaker 1: he got pissed he lost his grazing allotments and said
Speaker 1: all right and brought in domestic sheep when we lost
Speaker 1: forty three sheep that winter, because he was like, well,
Speaker 1: we had a we had a guy down in Wyoming
Speaker 1: that he was basically a cattle producer, but he had
Speaker 1: he had cattle a lotments up to eleven thousand feet
Speaker 1: in the mountains and the in prime prime Big Horn habitat,
Speaker 1: and he had he was, you know, not not the
Speaker 1: not the best grazer in the world. And he'd gotten
Speaker 1: in trouble with the BLM constantly and he lost his
Speaker 1: BLM cattle allotments. He goes, fine, I'm gonna put domestic
Speaker 1: sheep on my deeded land up at eleven thousand feet
Speaker 1: right in Big Horn habitat. Now, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: So so then he just doing just retribution. That's wildlife terrorism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's wildlife terrorism because you know he knows you know.
Speaker 1: So as as Garrett said, you know you've got you've
Speaker 1: got people, you've got deniers, and then you've got those
Speaker 1: that will use me as a weapon. Well, and that
Speaker 1: that also occurs on just the different public lands issues. Uh.
Speaker 1: There there are some who would use use the grazing
Speaker 1: part of it is as or the anti grazing part
Speaker 1: of it. Uh, bring big horns into that, just just
Speaker 1: to lay that on the table. In other words, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's all about where it might be about public land grazing.
Speaker 1: That's not what we're about either, has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with that. I don't follow what you're saying. Well, one
Speaker 1: of the one of the public land guys can say it.
Speaker 1: Say it better there we have U. There are some
Speaker 1: groups who would use big horns cheap to say that
Speaker 1: we don't want any grazing on public land, so let's
Speaker 1: use big horn cheap to accomplish this. So someone who
Speaker 1: had an agenda where they felt like they weren't so
Speaker 1: much pro big horn as they were antirasing on public lands,
Speaker 1: and they'd be like this would be a great place
Speaker 1: for some big horns, and I know that I can,
Speaker 1: I'll be able to manipulate that in the achieving my
Speaker 1: other goal. And that's not that's not our mission. Our
Speaker 1: mission is is simple. We put and keep sheep on
Speaker 1: the mountain. And and if we're gonna do this, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do it together with livestock producers. And
Speaker 1: I think there are some really good examples out there
Speaker 1: for people working together. Uh well, I think that the key,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I've met with and have spoken with
Speaker 1: a lot of very effective players in the conservation space,
Speaker 1: people like the people in this room, in this organization,
Speaker 1: who have a long track record. And the thing that
Speaker 1: I find that these groups are in is you're in
Speaker 1: the middle, and you got some crazies off to each side,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to guide right, You're trying to keep
Speaker 1: this thing moving along with some pretty radical fringe elements
Speaker 1: probably barking at you from both sides. Absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I think, you know, going back too, he
Speaker 1: just keeps preaching education and it's huge, huge, you know,
Speaker 1: I've worked with, spoke to your buddy Ryan Callahan a lot,
Speaker 1: like you talk to these companies who one of their
Speaker 1: biggest things is wool, you know, and they're always preaching
Speaker 1: that they're selling great wool products, but where do you
Speaker 1: get it? You know, you have some people that are
Speaker 1: they do and so they're safe, right, same with Sika,
Speaker 1: they're saying, you know, so talking with Sia in first life,
Speaker 1: I mean like, hey guys, you guys want to talk
Speaker 1: about where you get your wool from? Where? Maybe where
Speaker 1: you shouldn't. You have some groups that say we're environmentally friendly,
Speaker 1: you know, because we source our wool here locally and
Speaker 1: there's not these shipping things and all that, and then
Speaker 1: you go where do you get in? They go Colorado.
Speaker 1: You go, oh, so you're just killing you know. I
Speaker 1: sat next to Van Snard up on stage talking about how, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're sourcing your wool west of the Mississippi, you're
Speaker 1: probably contributing to the die off of big horn cheap.
Speaker 1: And that got an interesting, I mean bold statement. Man. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and but a statement that people
Speaker 1: could read into pretty heavily. Yeah it will, and you know,
Speaker 1: I I should probably should have followed it up more.
Speaker 1: But people just don't understand. And a lot of times
Speaker 1: these people building the garments and understand talking, you know,
Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan is a very educated dude when it comes
Speaker 1: to conservation and a lot of these things he did
Speaker 1: had no idea about. So so if we talk about
Speaker 1: if we look at this like the separation thing, the
Speaker 1: separation idea, Um, well, well first I'm gonna dress something
Speaker 1: you just brought up. Is there do you guys have
Speaker 1: a is there like, is there a the equivalent of
Speaker 1: like labeling something organic or labeling uh an organization to
Speaker 1: be of a certain pedigree of four oh one k nonprofit? Like?
Speaker 1: Is there do you guys have a way where you
Speaker 1: like are certifying or giving a stamp of approval to
Speaker 1: certain producers for practicing. No, we we looked into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a we had a um, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a Wild Sheep Safe campaign and it it's the
Speaker 1: challenge with that, Steve is it did get into a
Speaker 1: certification process and we didn't have the staff um and
Speaker 1: and you know then we we talked to our attorneys
Speaker 1: and they went, oh, man, you certify one and not
Speaker 1: you know, so yeah, we kind of backed away from
Speaker 1: that on the Wild Sheep Safe and and it's and
Speaker 1: it's it's almost like Scott had said on you know,
Speaker 1: what is effective separation. What is the distance. It's a
Speaker 1: real it's a real challenge there. It's like an impuge.
Speaker 1: It sound there's a thing. There's like a type of building.
Speaker 1: It's like what they call it salmon safe or salmon
Speaker 1: country or something in a building can in a building
Speaker 1: can comply in a certain way and has to do
Speaker 1: with the quality the runoff. That has to do with it.
Speaker 1: You've achieved some threshold, some measurable threshold of of acknowledgement
Speaker 1: that this water is going to be king that and
Speaker 1: this is this is what Garrett touched on. And so
Speaker 1: we're we're kind of, you know, we're kind of looking
Speaker 1: at a concept of conflict free lamb and wool um
Speaker 1: and we're still flushing that out. I mean, there's responsible
Speaker 1: wool standards that the wool industry uses. Interesting enough, I've
Speaker 1: read through most of the organizations that have responsible woolf standards.
Speaker 1: It's more animal husbandry. It's um. You know, it's transportation,
Speaker 1: it's predator control, whether or not there's some predator control
Speaker 1: going on in your area. They may think that's non
Speaker 1: friendly about wildlife. Nothing in there talks about big horn sheets.
Speaker 1: So it's more animal rights. Bet so we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're reaching out to some of those more environmental groups
Speaker 1: to say, hey, if you're if you're gonna, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna run down this path, you better put big horns
Speaker 1: in the picture. But as we as we mature, you know,
Speaker 1: this conflicts free space, um, it too is more of
Speaker 1: an education program. I mean, world, we will probably never
Speaker 1: be able to have completely conflict free scenarios in the
Speaker 1: Western United States unless you put the wool industry and
Speaker 1: this lamb industry out of business. And that's not our objective.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just not our objective. So the key
Speaker 1: about that question me ask this, does does the woolen
Speaker 1: lamb industry in the West absolutely rely on public land grazing? Okay,
Speaker 1: families and the big horns probably rely on private land.
Speaker 1: Uh no, more big horns are on public land even
Speaker 1: in the wintertime. Um yeah still yeah, still um so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's sevent of the time they're spending
Speaker 1: on public lands. So so there is a you know,
Speaker 1: there is a public land grazing scenario, and and it
Speaker 1: just it just varies on states on ten it's not
Speaker 1: it's not really the issue public land grazings out the issue.
Speaker 1: It's more education of private recreational herds or you know,
Speaker 1: our producers. UM. Colorado is probably the ground zero for
Speaker 1: the public land grazing issue with a lot of conflict zones.
Speaker 1: The BLM and the Fourth Service have risk of contact maps. UM.
Speaker 1: You can look at a map and it'll show active
Speaker 1: domestic sheep grazing allotments UM, occupied big horn range UM,
Speaker 1: and active BLM allotments and then red conflict zones, so
Speaker 1: they're mapped out. I mean, we you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: risk of contact analysis. That's that's going on. The bottom
Speaker 1: line is we pretty much know where the touch points
Speaker 1: and the hot points are. UM. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the solutions that we're looking at is what if we
Speaker 1: what if we took the top ten hot points and
Speaker 1: to take pick a state, Colorado, what if we took
Speaker 1: the top ten hot points that man, we've got you know,
Speaker 1: real critical core bighorn herds in there in that area,
Speaker 1: and we've got some pretty significant conflict zones. What if
Speaker 1: we address those first? You know, it's it's eating the
Speaker 1: elephant one bite at a time. It's it's a huge issue.
Speaker 1: It's a huge problem. UM. You know, the disease issue
Speaker 1: is complex. We you know, we don't have all the answers,
Speaker 1: but what if we could you know, incrementally, um, you know,
Speaker 1: ten percent at a time start addressing those issues with
Speaker 1: a variety of tools. Some of them are going to
Speaker 1: be bottom line moving a producer out of that area.
Speaker 1: And but the key there is can we find that
Speaker 1: producer or other grass de grace? Um? You know, are
Speaker 1: there private land areas? Are there? Are there? You know,
Speaker 1: are there tools that we haven't used yet? You know,
Speaker 1: can can the the wild sheep advocacy community? Um, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're not going to buy you out, can we
Speaker 1: incentivize you to go onto some lower elevation pivot point,
Speaker 1: you know, some alpha the field or some other grass
Speaker 1: field that you can utilize instead of high mountains summertime
Speaker 1: allotments where big horn sheep are grazing. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we just gotta we gotta get clever and and Clay
Speaker 1: said it, and we we've got we've got a program
Speaker 1: that we call our new narrative. But you know, the
Speaker 1: premises we've been doing the same thing over and over
Speaker 1: and over and expecting a different results. Time to change that.
Speaker 1: You know, we all know that's called insanity if you
Speaker 1: expect a different results. So we're we're, you know, we're
Speaker 1: we want to sit down with with willing producers who
Speaker 1: are progressive and get it and don't deny that there's
Speaker 1: an issue, and said, I'm saying, hey, you know, you
Speaker 1: wanna you wanna keep your family in business, and it's
Speaker 1: a part of the western landscape. We respect that, you know,
Speaker 1: as a multiple use advocacy organization, which is what wild
Speaker 1: She Foundation is, we respect that. But let's let's not
Speaker 1: do the same thing over and over and expect a
Speaker 1: different result. Let's let's do different things and get different results.
Speaker 1: And something Grace says a lot to you. You know,
Speaker 1: there's those that sue and those that do um. And
Speaker 1: we're kind of like that first group that knocks on
Speaker 1: the door, and when we get denied, then we go alright, well,
Speaker 1: when they knock on the door, it's probably not gonna
Speaker 1: be as pretty, you know. So we're kind of like
Speaker 1: that just right at the beginning, saying hey, let's let's
Speaker 1: work things out. And then when we leave if we
Speaker 1: get denied, you know, and there's there's unfortunate reality that
Speaker 1: other groups just come in and let me assume them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a comment. It kind of got a little
Speaker 1: bit lost in there, but it's I'll just chime in
Speaker 1: with the tribe's perspective on some of this. And it's
Speaker 1: really tied to public land grazing. And so the tribes
Speaker 1: I work for have a treaty reserve right to harvest
Speaker 1: big horn sheep, and that's a deal. It's the trust responsibility.
Speaker 1: But the federal government and they are at this time permitting,
Speaker 1: through a federal action, um the grazing of domestic sheep
Speaker 1: that adds knowingly adds risk to our populations of sheep
Speaker 1: big horns. So they we just basically can't accept that
Speaker 1: because we really can't quantify the risk, so we can
Speaker 1: want to find a minimum risk. But I want you
Speaker 1: to say that a a little more clearly. You're you're saying
Speaker 1: the tribe has a deal with the federal government that
Speaker 1: they can hunt big horns, but it's reserved in their
Speaker 1: treaty of eighteen and they're and they're able to argue
Speaker 1: that the federal government, by giving the grazing allotments to
Speaker 1: domestic sheep, is hindering their treaty right. If we are,
Speaker 1: if we are knowingly adding risk to the population viability.
Speaker 1: And I think we can demonstrate that with the science.
Speaker 1: It's like coming through a back door to grazing. Grazing
Speaker 1: domestic sheep on you know, suitable and prime big horn
Speaker 1: habitat is very problematic for us in that in that
Speaker 1: that that's just the nature of it. And I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: we we are, you know, not against public land grazing,
Speaker 1: but we just need to take a make a hard
Speaker 1: take a hard look at where it we're suitable to
Speaker 1: grades domestic sheep and where's not. And we need to
Speaker 1: protect the sheep we have, but we have to look
Speaker 1: at how are we going to expand our sheep populations
Speaker 1: If we have allotments that are stocked with domestic sheep
Speaker 1: in historic and prime big horn habitat, that could would
Speaker 1: be suitable. Otherwise we've got to think about that. So
Speaker 1: do you does does you're or when you're working for
Speaker 1: the tribe as a biologist, do you wind up interfacing
Speaker 1: with these guys a wild cheap foundation? Are you in communication? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What are the conversations that you guys have private? No,
Speaker 1: it's it's always a good it's always a great discussion
Speaker 1: because this is a it's a tough it's a tough,
Speaker 1: tough question. You know, you guys are coming at it
Speaker 1: from the same side of the thing, or you want
Speaker 1: what's best for big horns. We do. That's and that's
Speaker 1: the we just have it. The tribe has a very
Speaker 1: different worldview of that. You know, I understand that was
Speaker 1: something that was taken away and it's still a cultural memory.
Speaker 1: It's there. They want to be fully fully be able
Speaker 1: to fully exercise that and a couple of tags is
Speaker 1: is not sufficient. We do coordinate with the States for
Speaker 1: for on issuing big horn sheep tags, and so that's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a sore point. So we really
Speaker 1: need to figure out how we can move the needle
Speaker 1: and and and get sheep back where they belong. Yes,
Speaker 1: so how does that work when they're on Indian reservation land?
Speaker 1: Then they're technically owned by well, we don't have big
Speaker 1: horn sheep on the reservation who have a relatively small
Speaker 1: reservation um, but you have hunting rights offside the reservation
Speaker 1: and about four different herds of sheep. And so we
Speaker 1: work with the states and and figure out a tag allocation,
Speaker 1: a lotment, and we issue we hold a drawing just
Speaker 1: kind of similar to the state drawing and they'd like
Speaker 1: to see more big horn tags, which means they need
Speaker 1: more to see more big horns. Yeah, are you guys? Uh?
Speaker 1: I know you can't really answer this, but it's gonna
Speaker 1: throw it out there anyway. Optimistic or pessimistic about big horns.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of like good work has been done,
Speaker 1: right man, I mean we were down to we're up
Speaker 1: to what what's a livable number for you? You know?
Speaker 1: That's that is. The tough one is is where do
Speaker 1: we want to go? Um? And I guess the best
Speaker 1: way for us to express that is we would like
Speaker 1: to see bighorn sheep everywhere they are now suitable. The
Speaker 1: problem is, Steve Um, you know, suitable what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Where they're safe? Um, It's tough to find places to
Speaker 1: translocate bighorn sheep that they're not going to get into trouble,
Speaker 1: trouble being just this trouble, the trouble trouble running into
Speaker 1: a domestic domestic That is that really that is number
Speaker 1: one in hitting factor on restoration of big horn sheep
Speaker 1: is is contact with the stick cheap and goats. So
Speaker 1: fair to say, like if it wasn't for the disease,
Speaker 1: not blame, blame whoever. But if if the disease for
Speaker 1: whatever reason didn't exist, is it fair to say that
Speaker 1: we might have a million big horns or five thousand
Speaker 1: big horns in the country. Well, we certainly have more
Speaker 1: than eighty five thousand, and you'd probably easily say, probably
Speaker 1: double that and maybe triple that. I mean, we've we've
Speaker 1: quite you know, we've we've had a threefold increase since
Speaker 1: the late sixties seventies, and I think we could have
Speaker 1: another threefold increase. But right now, there's it's tough to find.
Speaker 1: Um is is Scott's saying, you know, thirty five kilometers.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're sitting in my office and there's a
Speaker 1: Montana unlimited big horn ram that I saw in winter Range,
Speaker 1: and I took him thirty miles away. So that's thought
Speaker 1: thirty kilometers. That's thirty miles away. You got unlimited cheap,
Speaker 1: I did. That's an unlimited cheap It's a big unlimited
Speaker 1: cheap and it's a thirteen and a half year old
Speaker 1: unlimited sheep. Like to kill me. Oh man, you found
Speaker 1: you you found that same ram. Thirty we found that
Speaker 1: same ram. You know, a blind hog can find an
Speaker 1: acorn every once in a while. That's a big, unbelievable Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that's the exact on my on the front of
Speaker 1: my door. I have the live picture of that ram
Speaker 1: I had. I had a photograph in in winter range
Speaker 1: of that ram on my desktop on my MacBook for
Speaker 1: nine months. And we found three rams in a different
Speaker 1: unit and one of them was that guy. One of
Speaker 1: them was bigger. That's nice thing about sheep as you
Speaker 1: can really eat because they don't lose, right, they got
Speaker 1: a horn and they don't lose it. You got you
Speaker 1: three chunks of character. Now, you know I need to
Speaker 1: I need to preface in in case you know your
Speaker 1: audience thinks I'm a great cheap hunter. I had a
Speaker 1: great sheep hunter with me. I actually had Kevin Hurley
Speaker 1: are our conservation director now our vice president conservation. He
Speaker 1: was our He was kind of our camp Jack and
Speaker 1: I had the as and ahole. Jack Essington Jr. Who
Speaker 1: I think has sheep blood running through his veins, was
Speaker 1: with me. So he and I, he and I backpacked
Speaker 1: up in and we found the ram in Montana. You've
Speaker 1: got to get out of there in forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: You've got to present a a full head and cape
Speaker 1: within forty eight hours to game and fish or fish
Speaker 1: won parks and we got we got to the biologists
Speaker 1: and forty eight after a bivouack and a lot of hoping,
Speaker 1: just just all the things you love. Huh, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: But the point I realized, the point you were making
Speaker 1: is just the distance is covered. Yeah, that ram, that
Speaker 1: ram covered thirty miles and that was just standard for
Speaker 1: that ram, and he didn't do it by going into
Speaker 1: straight line. Now, the good news is in in that
Speaker 1: unlimited area, there's there's no more domestic sheet. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I mean you know that that and and the that
Speaker 1: was in the Still Waters Unit five hundred and those
Speaker 1: sheep are relative lee clean um and and relatively hardy,
Speaker 1: but they still have some resident pathogens in them, but
Speaker 1: they're they're they're living with it. The problem is you
Speaker 1: then bring domestic sheep back in there, and they bring
Speaker 1: in another strain of of OVI and that's that's the
Speaker 1: that's the ticker, that's the straw that broke the camel's back,
Speaker 1: and then you then you get a die off again.
Speaker 1: So let me hear with this question. Now that we've
Speaker 1: kind of like prodded around what the future might look
Speaker 1: like and what's acceptable? Um do we now? Do we
Speaker 1: right now know that at least it won't get worse?
Speaker 1: I don't you know? There there are some and I
Speaker 1: didn't answer your first question. I am going to yea,
Speaker 1: because there's there's you know, there's there's those within our
Speaker 1: community to think that status quo is success. Um. While
Speaker 1: she Foundation, at least from my perspective, is not gonna
Speaker 1: up status quo as success. Um. We want to come
Speaker 1: up with some more unique solutions to this problem. And
Speaker 1: they're they're out there. Um that while I was in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. I had had a beer with that domestic
Speaker 1: sheep producer and in Nevada they took a little different tact.
Speaker 1: There were a bit basically willing to accept more risk.
Speaker 1: Some states would be willing to do that, others would not. Scott,
Speaker 1: I don't think that. So. So here here's a scenario.
Speaker 1: Are are we willing um? If there if we can,
Speaker 1: if we can work more on the movie free, Um,
Speaker 1: if we can work with producers on better practices, is
Speaker 1: our community willing to let's say, in Montana, UM, put
Speaker 1: wild you know, translocate wild sheep into areas that typically
Speaker 1: we would not because we're fearful of that that the
Speaker 1: disease transmission. And that's a big question we're facing right now.
Speaker 1: So there's to spend the money on it. Are we
Speaker 1: willing to spend the money? Are we willing to to
Speaker 1: not litigate with a producer because that producer didn't object
Speaker 1: to us moving wild sheep within arguments operation? You're making it,
Speaker 1: you're making a sort of treat We're just we're yeah,
Speaker 1: We're we're you know, this is it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's an organization wide question, it's a community wide question.
Speaker 1: And there's those that agree with it, those that disagree
Speaker 1: with it. But would we then set up protocols that
Speaker 1: you know, we know that if that big horn goes
Speaker 1: on a walk about, that big horn is not going
Speaker 1: to make it. Or do we use do we use
Speaker 1: unlimited areas as a way to separate big horns from
Speaker 1: domestic sheep? Are there are there areas and you know,
Speaker 1: this is again a kind of a Montana unique scenario.
Speaker 1: Can we use almost no go zones for for bighorn sheep?
Speaker 1: If a bighorn sheep is in that zone, it's unlimited
Speaker 1: you can take it. You know, we're we're just trying
Speaker 1: to think out of the box. Try to try to
Speaker 1: think out of the box again. Let's get let's get
Speaker 1: get past this doing the same thing and just fighting
Speaker 1: over this. The good news And I guess why I'm
Speaker 1: I'm um optimistic and um realistic, but optimistic is um
Speaker 1: we are learning more and more and more on the
Speaker 1: disease issue. If we can get the domestic sheep industry
Speaker 1: to spend as much money as we do on disease research,
Speaker 1: that will help their industry. Because there's some there's some
Speaker 1: the data that show that you know, a movie is
Speaker 1: not good for domestic sheep either. Uh, it's it's endemic
Speaker 1: to him and it's resident to him. But it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, the best or did one study
Speaker 1: I think that he was he was looking at the
Speaker 1: live weight and it was like a seven percent increase
Speaker 1: and then it change so you know, probably shouldn't use
Speaker 1: those numbers, but there was a kind of a significant
Speaker 1: weight gain, uh change between in a movie free domestic
Speaker 1: sheep and a movie positive domestic sheep. The movie free
Speaker 1: gained weight quicker. Well, then there's a market incentive, so
Speaker 1: maybe maybe there's some you know, something that we can
Speaker 1: learn there. We're not there yet. It's it's it's unproven,
Speaker 1: it's not published, it's not peer reviewed. Um, but maybe
Speaker 1: there's something there. But you know, wouldn't that be cool
Speaker 1: if we can use market incentives, uh to encourage domestic
Speaker 1: sheep producers to uh you know, if they can um
Speaker 1: have a movie free sheep, you know, like like pretty
Speaker 1: much eliminating small smallpox. Maybe there is some sort of
Speaker 1: silver bullet where we can vaccinate domestic sheep and they're
Speaker 1: all a movie free. You know. We've got two bright
Speaker 1: guys in the rooms, Scott and Clay. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just a management guy and a marketing guy.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, there's some very people out there
Speaker 1: that are working on this issue. We've got the wildlife
Speaker 1: that community working on it. Um. There's not consensus on
Speaker 1: on what the solution is. But you know what, we
Speaker 1: haven't cured the common cold yet either, but at some
Speaker 1: point we might. But you have an interesting point there
Speaker 1: about producers being incentivized to get ahead of the problem.
Speaker 1: And ye, honestly, I had an interesting conversation one time
Speaker 1: with Wyoming's current governor Matt Mead. We're just talking about
Speaker 1: we're talking about sage grouse in the extraction industry, and
Speaker 1: he's saying, the many players in the extraction industry have
Speaker 1: a very long view and they're very sophisticated, and they
Speaker 1: know that like for them to be on the ground
Speaker 1: doing good business, they need to head off problems. And
Speaker 1: a problem that they have a vested interest in heading
Speaker 1: off is not letting wildlife get into dire situations where
Speaker 1: you're gonna then invite high level scrutiny into practices, and
Speaker 1: that what's good for them to operate in their area
Speaker 1: would be good sage grouse numbers, and that they can
Speaker 1: at times be very effective players when they have that
Speaker 1: long view and not heading into conflict, heading into disaster,
Speaker 1: courting litigation. But you just have But again, you have
Speaker 1: to be in it for the You have to be
Speaker 1: looking to the future to ten years profit, not tomorrow's profit. Right.
Speaker 1: It's a really good point. I'm optimistic. We've made a
Speaker 1: lot of progress and in wildlife disease and you know,
Speaker 1: disease in our domestic life stock. If you think some
Speaker 1: of the things we've gotten out of our domestic animals
Speaker 1: over the you know, centuries that we've been doing it.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm optimistically we can. If we put the shoulder
Speaker 1: this one, I think I think we can overcome it.
Speaker 1: I hope, I'm really hopeful. I think the fact that
Speaker 1: you're you know, honestly, Steve, you're here, like that's the
Speaker 1: reason to be optimistic, because this was something that wasn't
Speaker 1: really talked about a whole lot. You know, when you
Speaker 1: get these these guys that haven't incredible influence on the community,
Speaker 1: you know, and and understanding really what we're up again,
Speaker 1: inst you know, imagine this issue flipped onto the elk population,
Speaker 1: a totally different story and why because you know, North
Speaker 1: American model is a huge success largely because of opportunity
Speaker 1: to hunt, you know, relatively low opportunity to hunt wild cheap,
Speaker 1: relatively low funding for conservation. That's where we come in.
Speaker 1: If it was elk on the same landscape, man, this
Speaker 1: wouldn't even be a discussion. Could you imagine if twenty
Speaker 1: bull elk came down into a domestic sheepherd and they
Speaker 1: mowed down those twenty bull elk just because they came
Speaker 1: in contact with him, No way, no way, And so
Speaker 1: the almost what makes them so aspirational, like you know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's so difficult to get a tag, it's
Speaker 1: so difficult to get to their habitat. The things that
Speaker 1: make them so aspirational can also impede them on making
Speaker 1: them relatable to our everyday lives and understanding what's going on.
Speaker 1: If we see a die off of fourteen thousand feet,
Speaker 1: we don't really take heed to it and it's not
Speaker 1: something that impacts our freezer. We don't think it does.
Speaker 1: But we talked about wild Cheap being one point five million,
Speaker 1: you know, almost double what elk are. Did they imagine
Speaker 1: if they were imagine if it was something that you just,
Speaker 1: you know, you went down to Bob Wards and bought
Speaker 1: yourself a tag, and when when sheep hunting, like they
Speaker 1: a lot more advocates. That's an interesting point that Callahan
Speaker 1: brought up after being at the sheep Show because he
Speaker 1: was like, he's kind of marveling at the amount of
Speaker 1: people that are spending so much time, so much money,
Speaker 1: so much energy getting behind sheep conservation, and he's like
Speaker 1: the thing of it is, most of those guys are
Speaker 1: never gonna draw a sheep tag. They're just doing it
Speaker 1: because for the idea you know something. They do a
Speaker 1: lot of these, a lot of the chapters that they do.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun. You know, you sit down at the
Speaker 1: banquet and they say, all right, stand up if you've
Speaker 1: taken a sheet, and it's like maybe a fifth of
Speaker 1: the room. But people are gonna spend thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: every night because they just believe in it. It's just
Speaker 1: out of their grasp. They believe in it enough. You know.
Speaker 1: It's just this aspirational thing that we almost can't can't
Speaker 1: imagine going after. I would say that we have the
Speaker 1: most altruistic UM membership in our community. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: got seventy two hundred members. Steve last year we put
Speaker 1: four point six million dollars into Wild Sheep concerts four
Speaker 1: point six million, eighteen point one million in the last
Speaker 1: four years with a little small sixty eight to seventy
Speaker 1: two hundred member organization. UM Clay worked on a project
Speaker 1: UM a couple of years ago and we were we
Speaker 1: were looking at it and it's kind of switching gears
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it looks at the auction tags
Speaker 1: UM and those are a little controversial. We spent tons
Speaker 1: of time giving both sides of that those are a
Speaker 1: little both sides of that argument with Crystal clar Look,
Speaker 1: let me, let me, let me give you, let me
Speaker 1: give you some facts when it comes to wild Sheep concert,
Speaker 1: please please seventy four per Can I first explain what
Speaker 1: you're talking about? All right, We've talked about a thousand times.
Speaker 1: People always ask us about this, But um, when you
Speaker 1: have I'm speaking for the listeners right now, when you
Speaker 1: have a resource that isn't large enough to meet the
Speaker 1: demand on the resource, you have to find a way.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about a wild game resource. You have
Speaker 1: to find a way to allocate opportunity, right. And so
Speaker 1: if you live in the great state of Michigan and
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and you want to go deer hunting, there's enough
Speaker 1: deer to go around. Everybody goes down, you buy a
Speaker 1: deer tag, everybody gets to go with a lot of
Speaker 1: wildlife species. There's just the numbers aren't there, And so
Speaker 1: everyone throws their name in the hat and it's meant
Speaker 1: you know that, shouldn't they meant to be? But traditionally
Speaker 1: those opportunities are allocated democratically. An exception to that case
Speaker 1: would be what you're gonna now explain, Um, which would
Speaker 1: be when they take tags, usually for very coveted species
Speaker 1: or coveted hunting areas, and they take tags and sell
Speaker 1: them to the highest bit or. And here's the rub.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing you got paid attention to. And it's
Speaker 1: usually structured and subtle such a way that like nine
Speaker 1: of the money goes into the ground for restoration work,
Speaker 1: so it's not lying in someone's pocket. And this is
Speaker 1: tightly this is carefully watched. This is a carefully watched
Speaker 1: flow of money. So at that's that's a that's a
Speaker 1: great it's a great setup. And and if if I
Speaker 1: could expand on it, you know, I um Shae Mahoney
Speaker 1: is a great friend, and he and I give talks
Speaker 1: around you know the world, and he was listening to
Speaker 1: some of my talks on this this tag thing that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about. The special permits attacks you
Speaker 1: know where exactly what you said, where you know, one
Speaker 1: or two or five um special licenses are taken from
Speaker 1: the pool of available tags and sold to the high bidder.
Speaker 1: And I used to call that a bad stardization of
Speaker 1: the North American conservation models used to I support it.
Speaker 1: I never went that far, but I called it a bastardization.
Speaker 1: And I've I had Shane Shane Mahoney down in my
Speaker 1: drift boat. We're floating down the Yellowstone River and and
Speaker 1: we're you know, probably enjoying a beer in Shane's case
Speaker 1: againness and he was just having a good time. He goes, great,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to can you say it
Speaker 1: the way you can use his accent I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get I'm trying to get the voice of God, Mr
Speaker 1: Shane Mahoney, Great, absolute fabulous conservation. But you know, he says,
Speaker 1: you know, Grey, you know, I've I've listened to say
Speaker 1: this a number of times in a number of places
Speaker 1: that you know this this this special permit and tag.
Speaker 1: And it could also be a raffle tag and we'll
Speaker 1: get into that. But the special permit and tag is
Speaker 1: a bastardization of the North American model. He's saying to you,
Speaker 1: I've heard you've heard me say this, and I talk
Speaker 1: I you, you know, and I even use capitalism socialism
Speaker 1: kind of our our our standard system is an egalitarian
Speaker 1: pro grahmmed is and you know, Steve, as you put it,
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone can go down and get attack um
Speaker 1: when it comes to some of the coveted ones where
Speaker 1: it's a whether it's a big horn sheep or a
Speaker 1: stone sheep, or a desert sheep, or or a rocky
Speaker 1: mountain help in a particular unit in Utah, um you
Speaker 1: can auction off those tags. Two. So now that's that's
Speaker 1: not egalitariance of color. And I apply for a bighorn
Speaker 1: sheep tag every year in six or seven states, good
Speaker 1: for you, and in this state in particular, for thirteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen or sixteen years in a row, and I
Speaker 1: haven't gotten one. Just to give a sense of like
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, we're talking about the slim pickings.
Speaker 1: You got slim pickings on tag. You've got guys in
Speaker 1: Montana that have applied for thirty five years and have
Speaker 1: not drawn attacks. So you know, you're either lucky um
Speaker 1: or you go into a jurisdiction like Montana that has
Speaker 1: the unlimited units. But you know, we had a three
Speaker 1: three to four per cent suc sex. But so so
Speaker 1: we're on the river and Shane goes, you know, Grey,
Speaker 1: and he is you know, he and Valor's guys, so
Speaker 1: the probably the foremost authority on the North American model.
Speaker 1: He says, you're actually wrong. It's not a bastardization of
Speaker 1: the North American model. The North North American model also
Speaker 1: is one of its seven pillars gives the state the
Speaker 1: opportunity to decide how it funds wildlife conservation in that state.
Speaker 1: And so a state that decides, like Montana, that we
Speaker 1: will take out of the pool of big worn sheep,
Speaker 1: permits one auction tag and one raffle tag. And the
Speaker 1: key there is one goes to the you know, the
Speaker 1: high bidder and the very affluent one out of a
Speaker 1: couple of hundreds. But yeah, yeah, I think we have
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty tags or so, so you know, one
Speaker 1: goes as a as an auction tag, and one also
Speaker 1: is a raffle tag that you know, so us regular
Speaker 1: folks can you know, buy a raffle ticket and potentially
Speaker 1: have a little better odds than you know than the
Speaker 1: you know, you've been in for thirteen fourteen and some
Speaker 1: people thirty five years. So here's the interesting thing when
Speaker 1: it comes to wild sheep and and Clay a lead
Speaker 1: this study with a with an intern seventy four percent
Speaker 1: and I'll say that again, seventy four percent of WAFFWA
Speaker 1: Western Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies the Western agencies
Speaker 1: in United States and Canada UH seventy four percent of
Speaker 1: their wild sheep conservation agency dollars comes from either an
Speaker 1: auction or a raffle tag seventy percent. Now, so we
Speaker 1: will your peeling like let's say two tags out of
Speaker 1: a hundred plus tags and those two provide seventy four percent.
Speaker 1: In a state like Arizona, it's about nine. And the
Speaker 1: other thing that was interesting in this in this research,
Speaker 1: and we we used waff with data UM forty percent
Speaker 1: of all WAFFWA wild sheep conservation agency dollars comes from
Speaker 1: one organization and that's the wild Foundation. Really yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, we have a we have a very relatively
Speaker 1: small footprint when it comes to membership at we cast
Speaker 1: a very very long shadow when it comes to conservation
Speaker 1: and putting money on the ground. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's their sensibilities. Wyoming gives five tags away on on
Speaker 1: auction um if if while she Foundation went to Montana Fish,
Speaker 1: Wildlife and Parks in the commission and advocated for another
Speaker 1: auction tag, our building would be burned down. So you know,
Speaker 1: it is controversial, it's but you know, check this out. Man.
Speaker 1: I put it to my brother. Another guy put it
Speaker 1: to my brother in a conversation, and my brother like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing he likes more than just like wrestling with
Speaker 1: ethical questions. So they put the governor thing to him,
Speaker 1: and he was saying that he feels on auction tags.
Speaker 1: He feels it in balancing the morality of it or
Speaker 1: in balancing the ethics of it. You need to look
Speaker 1: at what are the impacts of the auction tag. Because
Speaker 1: the auction tag is going to remove an animal from
Speaker 1: the landscape, but the money, if well spent, is probably
Speaker 1: going to add a higher number of tags to the
Speaker 1: general pool by the habitat work and relocation work and
Speaker 1: putting more sheep on the ground, so that that money
Speaker 1: might be pulling us sheep out of the pool and
Speaker 1: returning four or returning five or returning ten. So there
Speaker 1: are actually possibly more tags made available thanks to the
Speaker 1: auction tag than in spite of the auction tag. He
Speaker 1: nailed it. You know, we were talking about that unlimited ram.
Speaker 1: I can assure you, uh and and and we were
Speaker 1: looking at some data back in we've changed, we've changed
Speaker 1: the dynamic in Montana now and now there's an application
Speaker 1: fee of fifty bucks. But um, the amount of sheep
Speaker 1: revenue coming into Montana, Fish, Wildlife and Parks on on
Speaker 1: the unlimited tags and the limited tag eggs was less
Speaker 1: than two hundred thousand dollars. It was actually a lot
Speaker 1: closer to a hundred thousand dollars. Around a hundred forty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. You can't pay a biologist in a truck
Speaker 1: and you know, uniforms and like on a hundred hundred
Speaker 1: and forty thousand dollars. You know that same year we
Speaker 1: sold the Montana tag for three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: We've sold that tag as high as four hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty thousand dollars. And you pointed out earlier nine of
Speaker 1: that money goes right back into fish, wildlife and parks
Speaker 1: in a dedicated sheep account. So we retained ten percent. Well,
Speaker 1: we spend a hell of a lot more than ten
Speaker 1: percent back in Montana. So one one percent of those
Speaker 1: dollars go right back onto the ground into Wild Chief
Speaker 1: Conservation in Arizona. It's one Wild Chief Foundation sells that tag.
Speaker 1: We spend a million dollars to put on a show
Speaker 1: to get somebody crazy enough to spend three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in a desert big horn sheep tag, and one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of that dollars is back to Arizona Game
Speaker 1: and Fish into a dedicated account to restore bighorn sheep
Speaker 1: and conserve bighorn sheep, and that that probably includes some
Speaker 1: disease spending. Absolutely, I'm like tipping more and more every year,
Speaker 1: So I tipped more and more in the direction of Like,
Speaker 1: it's just like one of those It's one of those
Speaker 1: things that you want to be like, yeah, man, I
Speaker 1: see where you're coming from. I'm not digging and you might.
Speaker 1: I'm not even asking you to esthetically like the auction tags, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not asking you to like at the aesthetics of it,
Speaker 1: but it's almost like you cannot argue with the efficacy,
Speaker 1: you know. And I getting back to that unlimited I
Speaker 1: know that I had as a regular guy, you know,
Speaker 1: a nonprofit employee. As a regular guy, I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to buy in effect a bighorn sheep. I was
Speaker 1: living in or in in Woman at the time. I
Speaker 1: was able to buy a bighorn sheep tag in Montana
Speaker 1: for seven and fifty bucks. Back then, as a Wyoming
Speaker 1: resident and hunt um big horn sheep in Montana. And
Speaker 1: I was able to do that only because some other
Speaker 1: crazy guy gal whatever had the wherewithal to spend three
Speaker 1: fifty dollars on one tag, and that money went to
Speaker 1: ensure that I had an opportunity to hunt in Montana.
Speaker 1: So I I look at it. You know, it's it.
Speaker 1: It can be unseeming. I look at a little different.
Speaker 1: I look at it as I am grateful that there
Speaker 1: are people out there that could give money to their
Speaker 1: alma mater. Uh, they could give money to cancer research,
Speaker 1: and they do. But there are those that have the
Speaker 1: wherewithal and they give it to wild sheep restoration and conservation.
Speaker 1: So um, instead of vilifying those folks, But we can't
Speaker 1: measure their motivation. Oh you you know, I mean you
Speaker 1: can't eat horns. I don't, you know. I think the
Speaker 1: way that I've I've said, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: us like to say hunting is conservation is a term
Speaker 1: We use a lot, you know, And I don't think
Speaker 1: that there's any better depiction of that, honestly than those
Speaker 1: auctions tag. When you take one tag out of the
Speaker 1: whole pool that funds seventy whatever percent of that conservation
Speaker 1: of that species, you know hunting, right, there is conservation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the numbers are, Yeah, the numbers are. You're struggling with this, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not because yeah, because here's the thing. Here's what
Speaker 1: I like to do. I like take too, I like
Speaker 1: in wrestling with an idea, I like to take it
Speaker 1: to the extreme because one might come in and say, well, wow, man,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. Let's take all the tags
Speaker 1: and auction them all off, because that would be a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of money. At which point, now
Speaker 1: I feel as though you have right. So we all
Speaker 1: agree that there's like that's that's not a tenable solution.
Speaker 1: So we all agree that somewhere in here there's a line, right,
Speaker 1: and we're like trying to like identify the line. Now
Speaker 1: to have a state do one that's pretty damn conservative.
Speaker 1: Do you guys have numbers on how much the raffle
Speaker 1: tag brings in? Um, I don't know if Garrett you
Speaker 1: have that, you know, Montana, It's it's typically a little
Speaker 1: shot of two dollars. Oh yeah, but it's significant. I
Speaker 1: mean it's significant. And that's you know that the you know,
Speaker 1: the auction tag is the is the main player. But
Speaker 1: you know, I probably you know hip pocket would be
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I wouldn't want to say a two thirds
Speaker 1: one third, but you know, maybe sixty of the money
Speaker 1: comes from the auction tag from a raffle. Have you
Speaker 1: guys ever calculated this out? Um, that's pretty good. I
Speaker 1: think my brother ran the numbers out. I can't remember
Speaker 1: if he was confident in it is. If the raffle
Speaker 1: tickets are five bucks, how much do you need to
Speaker 1: spend on raffles before you're doing better than just apply
Speaker 1: for the tag? Yeah, I just kind of think it's
Speaker 1: a surprisingly lower number, where like your odds of getting
Speaker 1: the tag increased bucks or something like that. No, the raffles,
Speaker 1: you know anyway, you know, bunch are our our community
Speaker 1: of chapters and affiliates. I mean that's you know, a
Speaker 1: raffle is so much better odds than any of any
Speaker 1: of the state or provincial if if there's an L
Speaker 1: A H up in the province, but you know, any
Speaker 1: of the L A H drawings, A raffles much better
Speaker 1: odds they're just throwing into the state. You're you're better
Speaker 1: off getting it, you know, if if you're an aspirational
Speaker 1: sheep hunter and we all are and you know, get
Speaker 1: into these raffles or you know, we've got you know,
Speaker 1: the gratuitous plug. But we've got less than one club,
Speaker 1: which is an organization or club if you will, within
Speaker 1: Wild she Foundation where for five bucks if you have
Speaker 1: not taken a Wild Sheep Ram, we're twenty five bucks.
Speaker 1: You're entered into a drawing for three doll sheep hunts
Speaker 1: that we give away at our convention. And we've got
Speaker 1: nine hundred or so, twelve hundred or so in that
Speaker 1: in that club within Wild Sheep Foundation. Um, you've got
Speaker 1: three chances. Uh, we we spice it a little bit, Steve,
Speaker 1: because the first drawn you don't have to be present,
Speaker 1: the second drawn you've got to be president, and the
Speaker 1: third you got to be present to win. UM at
Speaker 1: this last lesson one club reception and the receptions maybe
Speaker 1: a um one of our colleagues drew one of those. Yes,
Speaker 1: yeah he did, and and but that receptions maybe not
Speaker 1: the it's it's basically a beer fest. We went through
Speaker 1: twenty five kegs of beer in an hour and a
Speaker 1: half for three sheep takes. You bet, So you know,
Speaker 1: we maybe maybe our community is kind of a drinking
Speaker 1: club with a sheep hunting problem. But it's really cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, the energy in that room is absolutely electric.
Speaker 1: And you know when someone that has aspired to be
Speaker 1: kicked out of the club, and that's what we say, Hey,
Speaker 1: you join the lesson one club hoping to be kicked out,
Speaker 1: and you're kicked out when you take a ram um.
Speaker 1: You know, we're giving away opportunities for for relatively low
Speaker 1: dollars um and trying to augment the state and provincial
Speaker 1: drawings that that are pretty low. Ots. My buddies, I've
Speaker 1: been saying how after many years, I'm saying how I'm
Speaker 1: like taking a break from shot show and I say
Speaker 1: to my buddies and I'm gonna start I'm gonna spend
Speaker 1: a couple of years at a couple of other shows.
Speaker 1: And I've brought it up with multiple of my friends
Speaker 1: in the in the hunting industry, and they universally are like, dude,
Speaker 1: cheap show. It's fun, it's a family, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a um. You know. We talked about the altruism,
Speaker 1: but what what's cool? And I think there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a misnomer about who who we are because
Speaker 1: you know, the the talk comes about and I threw
Speaker 1: the numbers out, you know, four point six million dollars
Speaker 1: last year with a relatively small club. So the the
Speaker 1: the erroneous assumption is that, you know, it's just a
Speaker 1: bunch of rich folks. It really isn't it. The demographic
Speaker 1: our our our show are is you know, the age
Speaker 1: is going down and down and down because it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's something bad ass about hunting sheep. There's something something
Speaker 1: bad ass about wanting to hunt sheep. Uh, there's something
Speaker 1: bad ass about training to hunt sheep. So we're seeing
Speaker 1: our our attendants age go down and down and down.
Speaker 1: We have backpack races, indoor, backpack races outdoor. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just a fun time. But what what
Speaker 1: was interesting? And I had a guy come up to
Speaker 1: me and it was actually at the Lesson one Club
Speaker 1: this year, and he said, you know, um, I'm sitting here.
Speaker 1: There's people in there. Because now we let anyone go
Speaker 1: into the Lesson one Club. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: in the reception, you don't have to be a member.
Speaker 1: And people, I mean guys that have taken twenty seven
Speaker 1: sheep come into the lesson one club, just to see
Speaker 1: how cool it is for some new aspirational woman or
Speaker 1: man when their first sheep hunt. The first drawn is
Speaker 1: a female mountain climber that's dating a sheep and moose
Speaker 1: guide in Alaska outfit or in Alaska, and I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just fabulous. When she wants she you know,
Speaker 1: she wont a incredible Northwest Territories doll sheep bunch. She
Speaker 1: looks down at her boyfriend, and you know, she told
Speaker 1: me later she goes, you know, I couldn't sleep that nice.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting there poking him, you know, in bed,
Speaker 1: going do you see what I want? Did you see
Speaker 1: what I want? You know? I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's it's cool. It's the family. But this guy came
Speaker 1: up to me and he says, hey, look, he goes,
Speaker 1: I I go to all the shows, and I do too.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a member of every all of the
Speaker 1: organizations are all great, and we support him. But he goes,
Speaker 1: you know, I walk around this room and I have
Speaker 1: the feeling that there are some real big players in here.
Speaker 1: He goes, I feel I can talk to anyone in
Speaker 1: this room, and anyone in this room we'll talk to me. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great family. And there's something about
Speaker 1: wild sheep. You know, we talk about sheep fever. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about as being a sickness. But there's something
Speaker 1: about the places they live. Uh, there's something about how
Speaker 1: challenging it is to get up to where they live. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's something about the training that you have to do,
Speaker 1: the mental preparation, you know, and and it's probably in
Speaker 1: you know, Steve, you hunting places, that's just fabulous. Uh,
Speaker 1: and do it and do it the right way, do
Speaker 1: it the hard way, and do it the way that
Speaker 1: we all aspire to hunt. Um. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: the essence of sheep hunty. You know, you you gotta
Speaker 1: earn it. You know, it doesn't come easy. There's no
Speaker 1: easy ram. Yeah, it's for the hard players, it is, Steve.
Speaker 1: I'm I spent my life on Big Orange Cheap and
Speaker 1: I am a less than one member really I'm not. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: already made a decision. We're going to the uh well
Speaker 1: Sheep Show. Yeah, I want to go this year and
Speaker 1: it's not on shot show. It's February seven through to ninth,
Speaker 1: So we're we're off shot feasibly spread my wings. Man,
Speaker 1: I gotta check some new stuff out. I gotta checks
Speaker 1: some new stuff out. Um any uh, final thoughts around
Speaker 1: the table. We're doing the whole man. If you want,
Speaker 1: if you feel that it's all been said, you can
Speaker 1: just say it's all been said. I don't have any
Speaker 1: concluding bod man. I'm you know, as the preacher said,
Speaker 1: once I get started, generally I'm too lazy to stop.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you want me to do that,
Speaker 1: but I you know, I do think it's worth just mentioning,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve and Jannest. It means a lot having
Speaker 1: you guys here, you know, and helping us talk about
Speaker 1: you know, what we do as an organization. We reality
Speaker 1: is we conserve a species that lives at fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: feet and that lives below sea level UM. And that
Speaker 1: includes a lot of animals along the way. So that's
Speaker 1: a good way of putting it. Man, I never thought that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean when we do Guzzler projects, a frequent animal
Speaker 1: that visits as a desert tortoise. Right, you know, we
Speaker 1: just at a rehabilitation UM deal with encroaching conifers and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the guy. When we kind of got done,
Speaker 1: it goes well, actually this is more meal their habitat
Speaker 1: than anything else. But um, you know, so we can
Speaker 1: serve that species, and we have to watch that chain
Speaker 1: of events happen all the way through those different different
Speaker 1: elevations as they migrate. We have to watch you know,
Speaker 1: just food, um, predator management obviously, domestic sheep conflict and
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know that that happen. Has
Speaker 1: to happen, that chain has to happen the whole way
Speaker 1: for this to work. And the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: you guys are here and helping us tell that story,
Speaker 1: that just does good things for us, like helping sheep.
Speaker 1: You're touching a lot a while. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you're you're you're taking an animal that lives in the
Speaker 1: wildest places on both ends of the spectrum and probably
Speaker 1: one of the more wild animals and nature and behavior,
Speaker 1: and therefore you encapsulate a lot of critters right in
Speaker 1: the middle. And and so what we do. You know
Speaker 1: what it has like and wild cheap conservation comes from us,
Speaker 1: and we conserve a lot of critters along the way.
Speaker 1: We'll put for me. You asked us if if we
Speaker 1: were optimistic and and I am. UM. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times we focus on just the disease, just
Speaker 1: the just the negative side of of the story. And
Speaker 1: if you look at the numbers today, you have uh
Speaker 1: a better opportunity to see sheep, to hunt sheep. Uh
Speaker 1: My kids have, my grandkids have a better opportunity to
Speaker 1: draw a tag then than I did when I started
Speaker 1: my career. Uh, that's important to me, UM, I I
Speaker 1: and I do. I am confident that that uh. And
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've been accused of being Pollyanna. I've
Speaker 1: heard this one said that to me once. Uh, But
Speaker 1: but I'm confident that that we can come to the
Speaker 1: table and try to think outside of the box, think
Speaker 1: a little bit different. Scott tested on it earlier. The
Speaker 1: science is improving, We're learning more and more all the time.
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm confident that that we will come together
Speaker 1: to find solutions. And I'm talking about both while she
Speaker 1: advocates and the livestock industry to work together to achieve
Speaker 1: things that all of us benefit from. UM, I'm confident
Speaker 1: that that can occur. I I uh, I just think
Speaker 1: you know, the younger, younger generation, I I think they're smarter,
Speaker 1: I think they, Um, I don't know about that. Well,
Speaker 1: I just I just think I think that that the
Speaker 1: future is promising. And uh i uh, I don't want
Speaker 1: to go back. I don't want to go back to
Speaker 1: where we came from. We've we've invested too much blood,
Speaker 1: sweat and tears, uh to to be where we are today.
Speaker 1: And and I'm I'm proud of the whil You Foundation
Speaker 1: and proud of what we do every day. And I'm
Speaker 1: proud to work for the organization. UM, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: here if I didn't believe in the mission. And and
Speaker 1: so I'm I'm I'm optimistic about where we're headed. And
Speaker 1: never got a sheep. Not on purpose, I'll say it
Speaker 1: that way through. I'm just saying, never got a sheep?
Speaker 1: Do you draw? Do you put in for sheep? Huh?
Speaker 1: A lot like Steve thirteen Western State? No, probably not
Speaker 1: that much. I don't know with that many, but handful?
Speaker 1: Can you guys answer this quickly? Because I heard a
Speaker 1: little I heard a rumor our Lama's bad. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: a That's the main thing I wanted to ask is
Speaker 1: my brother is my brother need to kill all is
Speaker 1: lamas camel it's yeah, you know, we're we're not as worried. No,
Speaker 1: just give it to me straight. Yeah, we're not as
Speaker 1: worried about him. There's there's some new papers coming out, Clay.
Speaker 1: Maybe you talk about Scott, you can talk about I know, uh,
Speaker 1: Helen Schwansea up in British Columbia is a little bit
Speaker 1: more concerned about him, um than we are. You know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like pack goats. We're pretty concerned about
Speaker 1: pack goats. And and you know, as we as we
Speaker 1: learn more and more, pack goats seem to be more
Speaker 1: likely amovie free than than uh, you know, just a
Speaker 1: boar goat running around the so um. But but llamas
Speaker 1: can carry it. No, they can't carry micap Well, they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be able to carry micro plasma of a pneumonia,
Speaker 1: you know, the old of them. You know, the people
Speaker 1: keep a lot of people keeping texting me to bust
Speaker 1: my brothers. There's some potential diseases. Yeah, and we and
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like it's another rock that we
Speaker 1: gotta in turn and gosh that we gotta get involved
Speaker 1: with the even even the pac industry thing. Pack goats
Speaker 1: are a big thing we're working with the pack goat
Speaker 1: industry right now to develop some best management practices that
Speaker 1: we believe would work. They would involve from testing and
Speaker 1: other things. Kevin Hurley's actually meeting with those folks here.
Speaker 1: You're distributing goat recipes. No no, uh, if you got
Speaker 1: a good go to do that. Yeah. So so anyway,
Speaker 1: it uh for the short version is for us at
Speaker 1: this stage of the game, it's not worth gamble with.
Speaker 1: We don't believe that it's worth of gall Have your
Speaker 1: brother tested, I will, Yeah, he can have his testing absolutely,
Speaker 1: Just he probably know he's not like, he's not a
Speaker 1: negligent dude. I just haven't talked about it with him lately.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that he's doing whatever he should be doing.
Speaker 1: And he's the kind of guy too. I think if
Speaker 1: someone like laid out for him, like a really compelling case,
Speaker 1: I feel like he'd just be like, Okay, I gonna
Speaker 1: buy a horse, which is smarter anyway. Well, he just
Speaker 1: doesn't have that that background. Man. People to grow up
Speaker 1: around horses. You can't catch him his wife a horse.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to say whisper. That's
Speaker 1: almost every day. Her dad grew up around horses. Are
Speaker 1: great grandfather recommends that he'd does not get involved with horses.
Speaker 1: Is this the brother that lives in Miles City. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his wife comes from a long long line of horsemen,
Speaker 1: um breeders and you know, and ranchers, and she she's
Speaker 1: recommended that he temperamentally needs to steer clear of horses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got something? Was that? Was that your concluder? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's a good one, because I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: That was top of mind. Did we properly dodge it, No,
Speaker 1: but it was enough. I said, I got some code language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't want to poke that one in the eye
Speaker 1: right now, we gotta get bigger fish. Right. I'll just
Speaker 1: rewind just a little bit. If there's you there might
Speaker 1: be some listeners that or maybe a little confused about
Speaker 1: the setup. Just something about the sheep ecology that in
Speaker 1: the in the situation that we're in. So historically sheep
Speaker 1: evolved in you know, in large metal populations of well
Speaker 1: connected subpopulation, so individual to to a hundred size groups. Right,
Speaker 1: So all these you're on domestic horn sheep, so they
Speaker 1: were you know, moving through the landscape. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: ram groups going to breed, different groups of use, and
Speaker 1: so we had this sort of network of connection depending
Speaker 1: on the habitat. Like think about the basin and range
Speaker 1: in Nevada, those mountain ranges that jump up out of desert.
Speaker 1: Sheep will go across those, right. So that's where in
Speaker 1: modern times we've got humans in the bottom sheep you know,
Speaker 1: fullyar on cheap here on sheep have down on top across.
Speaker 1: That's where we're running our problems. The river systems. They're
Speaker 1: traveling up and down, so their ecology and their their
Speaker 1: evolution is to move in between groups. And so functionally
Speaker 1: we want to manage four large groups of sheep rather
Speaker 1: than small isolated groups because there's all kinds of negative
Speaker 1: impacts of that. So we're kind of stuck in that
Speaker 1: that problem where we're like, Okay, here's a good piece
Speaker 1: of habitat, but we've got surrounded by domestics and we
Speaker 1: can't have sheep shooting out of it and going to
Speaker 1: talk to their their friends up river. We've kind of
Speaker 1: gotten ourselves into a little bit of a pickle, and
Speaker 1: so that's that's a little bit of a pickle. By
Speaker 1: thinking in pocket mentality, we can have a few here,
Speaker 1: we can have a few there, yes, but they can't.
Speaker 1: But if they come out, we can't. We can't let
Speaker 1: them come out in the valley or we're gonna remove them.
Speaker 1: So we've kind of got ourselves into a bind in
Speaker 1: that way. But but look at all this great sheep
Speaker 1: halitat we have, and we want to have sheep there.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's hard to let them
Speaker 1: be sheep because their natural tendency is to move around
Speaker 1: between groups and you know, eventually spread out. Polling excellent
Speaker 1: point in in in Texas. You know, we've built those
Speaker 1: populations metal populations. There's constantly interchange between populations and we've
Speaker 1: encouraged that because we haven't had the domestic sheep issues
Speaker 1: to deal with. So that's an excellent point. Trying to
Speaker 1: and trying to restore that connectivity of hers really like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the pie in the sky and it's
Speaker 1: it's right and waff was um. You know, main goal
Speaker 1: as far as connectivity and metal population management, that that's
Speaker 1: the that's the goal we're shooting for, not just to
Speaker 1: have one big population or one robust one here. We
Speaker 1: need a bunch of them. They are all functioning together,
Speaker 1: exchanging to the neck material, and they're talking to each other,
Speaker 1: they're they're more resilient to disease outbreaks when you have
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different scattered groups of sheep and
Speaker 1: they're they're moving their genes in between, and it's just
Speaker 1: it's it's the setup. We need to go for it.
Speaker 1: And it seems to give you a situation to have
Speaker 1: localized disasters horrible winners and and and then hopefully get
Speaker 1: them back without needing to then have it be by
Speaker 1: a helicopter exactly. So that was just one thing I
Speaker 1: think people might missed out on if they're not familiar
Speaker 1: with sheep and how they've evolved. It's a good point.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, it spans habitat types too generally. Um,
Speaker 1: and then I guess my my little concluder is I mean,
Speaker 1: we've we've had a great discussion today and thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. Um, And a lot of the sheep
Speaker 1: have tats on public land, So folks listening, if you
Speaker 1: if this hit strikes a chord, get involved. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a public lands, public wildlife. You know, you need
Speaker 1: to be if you want to be heard, got to
Speaker 1: be there, you know. And a lot of these decisions
Speaker 1: are being made, you know, policy level stuff that's disconnected
Speaker 1: from the science, and if you don't like it, you
Speaker 1: need to be there. And so that's my main point
Speaker 1: is get involved. These are these are everybody's sheep and
Speaker 1: we need to be be there to make good decisions.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so and I hope that everybody listening
Speaker 1: will be able to someday draw sheep tag. You know
Speaker 1: you've hunted all over the West. How many big horn
Speaker 1: mountains have you passed? Sheep mountain, sheep ridge, big sheep ridge.
Speaker 1: Most of them don't have sheep. I think we need
Speaker 1: to get We need to get there where big horns
Speaker 1: and sheep mountains are are restored with sheep, bighorn sheep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if every sheep mountain had a sheep on it would
Speaker 1: be in good shape. One last concluder, one last concluder. UM,
Speaker 1: Steveana's first, first and foremost. UM. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for the opportunity I talked about while Chef Foundation
Speaker 1: casting a broad concert Baian shadow. Um, you cast a
Speaker 1: huge communications shadow and a lot about what we were
Speaker 1: talking about today was education, and you've provided us an
Speaker 1: opportunity to educate a hell of a lot of people
Speaker 1: and we're grateful. Um. The final thought that I'd like
Speaker 1: to to to say is that you know, we we
Speaker 1: you touched on it on this the extremes. You know,
Speaker 1: there's extreme on the right, that's extreme on the left. UM.
Speaker 1: And I've said this a few times a few different groups,
Speaker 1: and I think it resonates. If if we could concentrate,
Speaker 1: whether it's the non consumptive community, the hunting community, the
Speaker 1: conservation community, the environmental community, the domestic sheep industry, the
Speaker 1: cattle industry, the you know whatever, and the wild sheep
Speaker 1: Avasacie community, if we could aspire, work and focus on
Speaker 1: the eighty to ninetent that we agree on and not
Speaker 1: spend all our time on the ten to that we
Speaker 1: dis agree on, we can move mountains. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of our new narrative. Let's let's start looking at the
Speaker 1: areas where we agree and work on those and not
Speaker 1: bitch and moan and focus on the areas we disagree.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting idea that you imagine a big room
Speaker 1: and everyone's in it, and you make an announcement if
Speaker 1: you think wild sheep are cool, come over in this room,
Speaker 1: and most people are gonna wander in the room and
Speaker 1: then start there. Ye, put our differences aside. Look for
Speaker 1: areas that we can work together, not areas that we
Speaker 1: spend all our time fighting. Yeah, you'll get a lot
Speaker 1: of work done in that space. We'll put and keep
Speaker 1: cheap on the mountain wild sheep. Now, what's an admirable goal? Man?
Speaker 1: I think that anyone who you know is up in
Speaker 1: some high crazy mountain peak where you're just kind of
Speaker 1: like happy with yourself or just haven't gotten up there,
Speaker 1: and to see one of those things crashed out and
Speaker 1: turn his head and there's those curls. It's just magical.
Speaker 1: Makes it makes the hair stand up on the back
Speaker 1: of your neck. It's like you are you're seeing, touching,
Speaker 1: feeling wilderness. All right, Well, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: coming on everyone. I appreciate the time.