This had to be the busiest “Rendy Day 1” anyone has ever seen. Usually Thursday is pretty low-key with only a few trailers rolling in while many more show up on Day 2. This year it seems most folks made it in the first day, perhaps because I scheduled the classes for Friday instead of Saturday.

It’s always exciting when Dwite Sharp rolls in! He had 32 kids in his trailer and soon they were picketed out on the grass, waiting for their new owners to take them home after the Rendy.

We had a great campfire discussion that night about Bighorn Sheep issues. Maggie Highland flew in from Pullman, WA just for this talk, and she shared quite a lot of information on Bighorn Sheep disease research and theories.

Recently retired Lake City Forest Service/BLM officer, Edna Mason, also joined us for that discussion. She didn’t have a lot to say, but what she said was very interesting. Apparently Bighorns in the Lake City area have never experienced a die-off despite the fact that domestic sheep have been grazing in their territory every summer for the past 100+ years. She is frustrated with the Wild Sheep Foundation’s agenda to push domestic sheep out completely (even when there is no evidence of harm) instead of working with shepherds to find compromises. She believes the only reason Bighorns were recently collared and are being tracked in the Lake City area is so the Wild Sheep Foundation can prove territorial overlap with domestic grazing areas and use that evidence push domestic sheep out.

John Mionczynski also shared many of his experiences studying Bighorns over the years. He is convinced that low selenium is one of the key factors in Bighorn die-offs. John was very interested to know that Lake City’s herds have always been healthy. Edna was able to show John on a map where the local Bighorns live so he could collect plant and soil samples for testing.

I hope that as knowledge is shared, we will arrive at a healthy solution to helping Bighorn Sheep thrive while still allowing multiple land-use activities such as goat packing and domestic sheep grazing. After hearing from all these bright minds on the subject, I’m convinced that it does not have to be “either-or”.