Colorado scraps effort on sheepherder wages

Looking for a great career?

Do you want a sheepherder’s job? Look for yourself and you can make a whopping $650 – $750 a month! No, that’s right now, not some time in the future like 1950!

Type in the word “sheepherder” on the Idaho Works job search page and see for yourself: https://labor.idaho.gov/idahoworks/es/jobsearch/default.aspx

It’s a career full of challenge! You get to work with dogs, sheep, and sometimes goats! You also get to work for people who have great connections with the Legislature in any given western state! Hell, you might even get to work FOR a legislator!………. A lot! Doesn’t it sound exciting?!!!

Not only to do you get to experience extremely remote areas for long amounts of time you may be exposed to interesting diseases like Q-fever or others!

To find out more read this!

Colo. scraps effort on sheepherder wages
By IVAN MORENO – Associated Press writer

“Immigrant advocacy groups complain that the workers, who come to the United States mostly from Peru and Chile on temporary work visas, are sometimes subjected to 90-hour work weeks for anywhere from $600 to $750 a month on ranches in the West, including Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and California.”

US citizens need not apply.

Grizzly mauls sheepherder; kills dogs, sheep

Are the wilds of the Upper Green a place for sheep?

By Ken Cole and Ralph Maughan

Grizzly mauls sheepherder; kills dogs, sheep. By Joy Ufford with Derek Farr. Sublette Examiner

Domestic Sheep © Ken Cole

This is bad. A poor shepherd got seriously hurt. With all the media attention on sheep ranchers there is too little attention to the men who do most of the work, usually living lives of isolation in remote areas often far from their native lands. The article says that the injured herder, Marcello Tejeda, is from Rock Springs. We hope he was given health insurance as part of his contract.

The upper Green River country is some of  America’s scenic and wilderness wonderland. For twenty years now it has been in process of reclamation by the great bear and wolves. Grizzly bears were not moved into the area like the sheep’s owned was quoted. They gradually reinhabited the area completely on their own.

Cattle and sheep eat the forage that could support more elk. Livestock trample the banks of steams that splash thousands of feet down from glaciers of the Wind Rivers or the lingering snowspatches high in the Gros Ventre Mountains.

With all of the losses the owner claims to have had due to predators doesn’t it beg obvious questions? Why graze your sheep here and should taxpayers have to pay for predator control, and other subsidies so you can continue. Is this an appropriate place to graze sheep, a basically defenseless animal?

I think we know what will become to these now unattended and scattered sheep.

Late afternoon in Tosi Creek at the eastern edge of the Gros Ventre Wilderness. The attack was described to have taken place in this general area. The day after I took this photo, I saw 6 different black bears while I was backpacking. That was in the 1990s. Now grizzlies have replaced many of the big black bears. Photo copyright Ralph Maughan

Rancher found guilty in sheep-dog case

Sheep dog bit woman while riding her bike and attacked another person’s dog. The dog had not been vaccinated.

It is not uncommon for people to come into contact with sheep guard dogs while recreating on public lands and I have been told many times that these dogs are trained to not attack people. This may be true in most cases but they certainly act aggressively towards people and can be very intimidating. Oftentimes they are not properly vaccinated.

Rancher found guilty in sheep-dog case – The Park Record.

Nez Perce Tribe quits Idaho bighorn working group

New state law on bighorn undermines the working group process, tribe says-

This is good news about the sorry situation. Everyone should quit this group set up to make it appear that the Otter Administration gives a damn about bighorn.

Bad news!

And on top of this a bighorn mixed with domestic sheep (on private land), but adjacent to one of these troublesome BLM sheep allotments near Riggins the other day. Then the bighorn went back to its herd.

I understand that today they are deciding whether to kill the bighorn herd of ten bighorn rams because of this interaction likely to spread sheep disease back to the bighorn.

Story: Nez Perce Tribe pulling out of bighorn work group. AP

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