Arizona Game and Fish: confusing and error-filled statements about bighorn and desert cougars at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge

If you are not familiar with Kofa, it is huge, almost 700,000 acres.

However, the bighorn have been struggling there, but their numbers are now increasing, a fact the AZ F & G ignored as they announced, but may not honor, a one-year moratorium on removal of desert cougars in the area (perhaps 3 are left).

Blog on the issue.

From PEER. Arizona Game Agency Scapegoats Cougars For Bighorn Travails

Just as So. Calif. bighorn stage comeback, Bush Administration proposes cutting their critical habitat in half

Bighorns facing smaller habitat.  San Diego Union Tribune

Groups unhappy with Idaho Fish and Game’s bighorn plan

Groups unhappy with Idaho Fish and Game’s bighorn plan. By Sven Berg. South Idaho Press.

The plan was forced on Idaho Fish and Game by politicians and domestic sheep interests. If anyone thinks Idaho will do a good job managing wolves, look at the bighorn sheep issue (an animal everyone likes except for some livestock interests).

I remains my opinion that the livestock industry hates all wildlife.

Settlement Reached in Lawsuit Challenging Illegal Sheep Grazing in Yellowstone Ecosystem

For years the U.S. Sheep Experimental Station, headquartered at Dubois, Idaho (not Dubois, Wyoming) has been grazing sheep in the top of the Centennial Mountains and elsewhere in the general area, and with no environmental analysis.

After yet another successful lawsuit by Western Watersheds and the Center for Biological Diversity, represented by Advocates for the West, they have agreed to do their first environmental analysis.

I recently found out they winter the sheep at the base of Lemhi Mountains in high semi-arid country. I had wondered since 1972, when I first went there, why this country looked so beaten out come spring.

Ralph Maughan
_____________________

For Immediate Release, February 20, 2008

Contact:

Michael Robinson, Center for Biological Diversity, (575) 534-0360
Jon Marvel, Western Watersheds Project, (20 788-2290
Todd Tucci, Advocates for the West, (20 342-7024

Settlement Reached in Lawsuit Challenging Illegal Sheep Grazing in Yellowstone Ecosystem: U.S. Sheep Experiment Station Agrees to Conduct Environmental Analysis

Boise, Idaho – The Center for Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds Project have reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in eastern Idaho to resolve a lawsuit filed last summer. The settlement requires the U.S. Sheep Station to analyze the environmental effects of the sheep grazing under the National Environmental Policy Act and to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the impacts of the sheep grazing on threatened and endangered species. The Sheep Station is part of the Agricultural Research Service within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The presence of these thousands of domestic sheep, and management actions taken on their behalf, harms sensitive and endangered native wildlife such as Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, lynx, gray wolves, and grizzly bears – and yet these impacts have never been examined on the thousands of acres that are directly managed by the U.S. Sheep Station in southeastern Idaho and southwestern Montana. Analysis of impacts on the even larger tracts of national forest and Bureau of Land Management public lands is decades out of date and was cursory.

Rocky Barker: Bighorn sheep strategy won’t resolve bitter controversy

Barker writes about Idaho Fish and Game’s decision to continue its policy to move or kill bighorn sheep that have contact with domestic sheep.

My view is the woodgrowers are getting more publicity than is good for them, but there yet needs to be some national news attention on this. The woolgrowers are also getting overconfident. Change is coming.

Idaho F&G will move to kill bighorns to keep them from mixing with sheep

F&G will move or kill bighorns to keep them from mixing with sheep. Interim strategy to prevent domestic herds from passing disease to wild ones has woolgrowers’ support but draws fire from sportsmen, Nez Perce and environmentalists. By Rocky Barker. Idaho Statesman.

So the outrage forced upon Idaho Fish and Game has been officially announced. This is basically how the state’s wolf policy was created too, and by many of the same lobbyists.

“The buffer zones, let’s call them extermination zones, are to be determined without public comment,” [Jon] Marvel [of Western Watersheds Project] said. “Even if you thought they were a good idea, creating them with secret meetings between ranchers and Fish and Game is wrong when it affects wildlife owned by all Idahoans.”

Where does self-styled “Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife-Idaho,” stand on the “let’s-kill-bighorn-sheep” to appease woodgrowers plan?

Bighorn advocates butt heads

This is a long summary of where the bighorn sheep controversy in Idaho stands and who is saying what. I think it’s a useful article for bringing folks up to date.

Bighorn advocates butt heads. By Lynea Newcomer and Kathleen Turner. The Wood River Journal

Idaho Conservation League scolds Otter for bighorn sheep policy

ICL scolds Otter for bighorn sheep policy. Environmental group calls it a ‘top down approach’. By Matt Christensen
Times-News writer.

The governor’s bighorn sheep policy is supposed by announced Feb. 15.