Speaker 1: Welcome to More Outdoors on News Top five sixty k
Speaker 1: lv I. This is Chester Moore and I'm super excited
Speaker 1: to have my friend Kevin Hurley. He is vice president
Speaker 1: of Conservation with the Wild Sheep Foundation, and Wild Sheep
Speaker 1: Foundation just released the Conservation Impact Document that details their
Speaker 1: granted aid projects doing all kinds of conservation work for
Speaker 1: wild sheeap around the country.
Speaker 2: So welcome to the program. Kevin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, good morning, Chester.
Speaker 1: We were just together it seemed like yesterday, but a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago at this point in Alpine, Texas
Speaker 1: and then El Paso for sort of one of the
Speaker 1: highlights of this conservation Impact document the restoration of desert
Speaker 1: big horns of the Franklin Mountains.
Speaker 3: It was only two weeks ago, but it seems a
Speaker 3: whole lot longer ago than that. We have a standing
Speaker 3: joke that as as the sheep world turns, it turns rapidly.
Speaker 3: I like it. I like it.
Speaker 2: So this program has been something that's.
Speaker 1: Sort of been in the works for a long time
Speaker 1: where the Franklin Mountains that literally are in the city
Speaker 1: of El Paso haven't had desert big horns for over
Speaker 1: one hundred years. A great area to restore populations from
Speaker 1: Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area. But this this was really
Speaker 1: if a crucial timing on this because of something that
Speaker 1: hit Texas a few years ago. We're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about this and other project. Let's talk about get it
Speaker 1: out of the way. Micae Plasma ovineumonia. Yeah, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that and how that impacts wild cheap.
Speaker 3: That's a mouthful. Michael or m OV is the acronym
Speaker 3: everybody uses our abbreviation, and so basically it's a respiratory
Speaker 3: bacterium that the first thing it does is it compromises
Speaker 3: the little beating hair cecilia in an animal's windpipe, whether
Speaker 3: it's a human or a bighorn shape or whatever. And
Speaker 3: so when those sillia, those little hairs are beating up,
Speaker 3: you know, that's when you know and I could you
Speaker 3: cough up if we had some cooties and some something
Speaker 3: we had to get rid of. But MOV tends to
Speaker 3: compromise those sillia, and so it affects any other pathogens
Speaker 3: that can get in and into the air way. They
Speaker 3: don't have that defense mechanism, and so a lot of times,
Speaker 3: you know when a while like bat does a knee
Speaker 3: cropsy on a dead big orange sheep, they'll open it
Speaker 3: up and look at the lungs, and they might refer
Speaker 3: to the consolidation in the in the lungs as fifteen
Speaker 3: percent or forty percent or seventy five percent consolidated. And
Speaker 3: basically what that means is all the fluids and all
Speaker 3: the junk that goes into the into the lungs, they
Speaker 3: can't get it out, and so unfortunately those animals sadly
Speaker 3: die of their own bodily fluids. They basically drowned. And
Speaker 3: so it's a it's a real issue in wild sheep
Speaker 3: conservation around the West.
Speaker 1: And it is believed to be the main reason that
Speaker 1: wild sheep numbers, especially big one populations went down dramatically
Speaker 1: from the eighteen hundreds until like up to the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties before recovery kind of began.
Speaker 3: It is, you know, and if you look at early
Speaker 3: guestimates and early maps that showed where mountain sheep occurred
Speaker 3: in the western US and Canada and Mexico prior to
Speaker 3: eighteen fifty, it was pretty incredible, you know, really widespread distribution.
Speaker 3: And back then, of course, nobody had any ability to
Speaker 3: fly or you know, conduct periodic surveys or systematic surveys
Speaker 3: come up with a population estimate. So there was an
Speaker 3: early naturalist, Ernest Thompson Thompson Seaton that published a series
Speaker 3: of books in nineteen twenty eight called The Lives of
Speaker 3: Game Animals and his Best Guestimate, and that clearly is
Speaker 3: what it was. He figured there was one and a
Speaker 3: half to two million big own sheep in the West. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, nobody can validate that number, and it was
Speaker 3: the seat of his levi's back then that he made
Speaker 3: that estimate. But suffice it to say, wild cheap numbers
Speaker 3: in the western US decreased dramatically, so that by the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties there was an estimated fifteen to seventeen thousand
Speaker 3: left in the Western States. So that's an even if
Speaker 3: Seaton's estimate of one and a half million was close
Speaker 3: to correct, that was a ninety nine percent reduction down
Speaker 3: to fifteen thousand, and so whether it was a ninety
Speaker 3: eight or a ninety seven or a ninety five percent decline,
Speaker 3: it was a dramatic decline and reduction in wild sheep
Speaker 3: numbers and distribution across the West. Prior to what I
Speaker 3: would call Europeans settlement opening up the West, early mountain
Speaker 3: and early explorers, railroad crews, all the folks that came west,
Speaker 3: and with them they brought their livestock. Obviously they needed
Speaker 3: that and you know, for not only ranching for themselves,
Speaker 3: but also meat for these railroad crews. And you know,
Speaker 3: you had to feed an army of hungry railroad workers.
Speaker 3: And so there was some unlimited hunting. You know, back then,
Speaker 3: it wasn't hunting, it was subsistence, and so you know,
Speaker 3: mountain sheep are very tasty, and so there was unregulated
Speaker 3: take back then. And there were also large predators, you know,
Speaker 3: that roamed the landscape, and they certainly co evolved with sheep,
Speaker 3: and they knew how to take a sheep if they
Speaker 3: could get it. Mountain lions, maybe, coyotes on lambs, golden
Speaker 3: eagles on lambs, wolves in some places, grizzlies in other places.
Speaker 3: But with the introduction of domestic livestock, particularly domestic sheep
Speaker 3: or grazing, you know, these some of these respiratory bacteria
Speaker 3: are I won't say endemic, but they're they're pretty ubiquitous
Speaker 3: in domestic sheep, and obviously their industry and their producers
Speaker 3: deal with their challenges weight gain shipping fever some people
Speaker 3: call it, but you know, they've been able to manage
Speaker 3: that in their industry. But my analogy says, similar to
Speaker 3: some of the pathogens that European settlers brought to Native
Speaker 3: Americans in the West, smallpox, cholera, things like that that
Speaker 3: they had no natural resistance to. I think it's pretty
Speaker 3: analogous to the situation with domestic sheep and whatever pathogen
Speaker 3: load they brought with them and introduced some of those
Speaker 3: too naive bighorn sheep in the West.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Texas had got its population back up, Texas
Speaker 1: being on the eastern fringe of desert big Horn range
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds estimates maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand,
Speaker 1: and in twenty nineteen it was around fifteen hundred or so.
Speaker 1: And then we had a disease event. But this disease
Speaker 1: event seems to be a little bit different because of
Speaker 1: the cause of the disease. What transferred to them a
Speaker 1: non indigenous animal called the awdad or the barbary sheep,
Speaker 1: which was actually stocked in Texas in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: for hunting purposes and this has kind of created a
Speaker 1: crucial situation for desert big horns.
Speaker 3: It has. And so if you look at the Texas
Speaker 3: desert big horn numbers through time, you know their numbers
Speaker 3: and distribution shrenk and so I think, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: they were pretty much eliminated extra paint from West Texas yep.
Speaker 3: And then starting maybe in the fifties and sixties, with
Speaker 3: you know, some captive breeding facilities and some propagation facilities
Speaker 3: that Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in the Texas Big
Speaker 3: Own Society and private landowners ranchers in West Texas worked
Speaker 3: collaboratively to have enough sheep to put back on the landscape.
Speaker 3: And as you said, between say, just take an arbitrary
Speaker 3: number of nineteen sixty till twenty nineteen, West Texas had
Speaker 3: increased its desert big win populations to maybe add or
Speaker 3: above their historic highs, you know, fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred,
Speaker 3: whatever the right number was, and now unfortunately it's down
Speaker 3: around maybe five to six hundred left. And so I
Speaker 3: think some of the evaluations that have gone on in
Speaker 3: other Western states and provinces have said, you know that
Speaker 3: this contact with domestic sheep and then if you get
Speaker 3: infected big horns coming in contact with naive bighorns. There's
Speaker 3: also the pathogen transmission risk. But odd AD seemed to
Speaker 3: be implicated pretty significantly in the West Texas situation. As
Speaker 3: you said, you know, and we can't we can't criticize
Speaker 3: folks fifty sixty years ago. They did the best thing,
Speaker 3: and so TPWD when they brought ODDAD into Texas, I
Speaker 3: think in Paladero Canyon introduced them there. Well, if they
Speaker 3: could put that genie back in the bottle now, they
Speaker 3: probably would. It's you know, that genie's been out for
Speaker 3: six decades and the numbers I keep here in is
Speaker 3: maybe there are twenty thousand odd AD in the transpenkos
Speaker 3: and statewide. I don't know how many.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll talk more with Kevin Hurley
Speaker 1: from the Wild Sheep Foundation about Texas bighorns and more
Speaker 1: here on More Outdoors on These Talk five sixty klv I.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to More Outdoors on These Talk five sixty
Speaker 1: k LVI. This is Chester Moore continuing our conversation with
Speaker 1: Kevin Hurley from the Wild Sheep Foundation.
Speaker 3: The Wild Cheap Foundation, Texas Biggorns Society, and others have
Speaker 3: helped fund some research into looking at, well, what pathogens
Speaker 3: do odd AD carrey and is there a risk there?
Speaker 3: And so some work at Texas A and M by
Speaker 3: doctor Walt Cook, a longtime colleague of mine from when
Speaker 3: his days in Wyoming when I worked for Wyoming Game
Speaker 3: and Fish, and his graduate student Logan Thomas. They looked
Speaker 3: at Colemingland situations where they had some odd Ad and
Speaker 3: some desert bighorn in captivity and not right on top
Speaker 3: of each other, but separated. Well, it seems like they
Speaker 3: shared a water source, maybe there was a creek or
Speaker 3: some drainage that went through. And so a lot of
Speaker 3: work since then looking at is that the athogen transfer passway,
Speaker 3: is it through water is whatever? But the thing with
Speaker 3: thought ad kind of like domestic sheep. Maybe they've had
Speaker 3: MV or similar pathogens and they've adapted to them, so
Speaker 3: it's present, but it doesn't really, you know, crush their populations.
Speaker 3: But when that's introduced to a naive population of desert
Speaker 3: big ones, say it Black Gap or somewhere in Texas, yeah, boom,
Speaker 3: things you know start tipping over. And so it's been
Speaker 3: tragic to watch the climb back to add or above
Speaker 3: historic numbers, and then, like you said, in the last
Speaker 3: five years, numbers have dropped like a rock from historic
Speaker 3: highs down to five hundred or fewer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where the Wild Cheap Foundation, Texas
Speaker 1: Big Horns Society, collaborating the Texas Parks and Wildlife and
Speaker 1: other groups we're going to talk about come together. Elephant Mountain,
Speaker 1: Wildlife and an instrument area in your alpine is sort
Speaker 1: of the epicenter of the Texas Desert Big One program.
Speaker 2: It was believed that it's a clean herd in terms.
Speaker 1: Of disease, and there was going to capture happened two
Speaker 1: weeks ago to take animals from there and transfer them
Speaker 1: into the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, which Parks and
Speaker 1: Wallace says are odd Dad free. But let's talk now
Speaker 1: about what wild Sheet Foundation does, what kind of support
Speaker 1: I know, financially, but otherwise, how does wild Sheet Foundation
Speaker 1: get involved in a project like this.
Speaker 3: Well, let me get to that in a second. But
Speaker 3: one thing I do want to note in the Texas
Speaker 3: scenario is Elephant Mountain has been like you said, these
Speaker 3: sources of the go to population for TPWD and TBS
Speaker 3: and others to work on transplants, and so I always
Speaker 3: call my brother from a different mother. But Clay Brewer,
Speaker 3: he was the head of the there's a bigg Round
Speaker 3: program for TPWD in West Texas for long time, and
Speaker 3: so he and I worked on a collaborative collection of
Speaker 3: all the transplant information in the Western States and provinces.
Speaker 3: Started that in nineteen ninety six and Clai finished it
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen. It's a really cool document that says
Speaker 3: where have we moved sheep? And so we did a
Speaker 3: jurisdictional or jurisdiction by jurisdiction, we said what did you
Speaker 3: get from somewhere else? What did you give away in
Speaker 3: terms of sheep to elsewhere, and what did you do
Speaker 3: at home? So we've got a really good publication printed
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen, and as soon as it was printed
Speaker 3: it became obsolete because of continuing transports. But as we
Speaker 3: drove from Olpaso to Alpine, I had a couple guys
Speaker 3: with me. We'll talk about in a minute, but I
Speaker 3: had them. I printed some pages for them, and basically,
Speaker 3: in Texas's history up till twenty fifteen, there had been
Speaker 3: twenty imports of desert sheep totally fifty one head from Arizona, Nevada, Utah,
Speaker 3: different source pots, populations to help Texas get back on
Speaker 3: their feet. And then I think there were about thirty
Speaker 3: one transplants done within Texas again to restore sheep to
Speaker 3: those historic habitats that were still suitable. And so in aggregate,
Speaker 3: I think fifty one transplants that Texas was involved with
Speaker 3: moved about eight hundred or so sheep over a long
Speaker 3: period of time forty years or so. So but that's
Speaker 3: you know, Texas has a good record. And with Texas
Speaker 3: being ninety seven percent private land, you know, large landowners,
Speaker 3: big ranches there, it had to be collaborative and so
Speaker 3: TPWD and Texas Big Owners Society, Clay Brewer when he
Speaker 3: was doing it, and Freila and Hernandez now you know,
Speaker 3: got to work with those private landowners, good relations, try
Speaker 3: and get this done. But in this case, with Franklin
Speaker 3: Mountains being a state park, it was within Texas Parks
Speaker 3: and wildlifees umbrella so to speak. So their Wildlife Division
Speaker 3: work with the parks folks and got this transplant set up.
Speaker 3: It was a long time coming due to some challenges,
Speaker 3: but anyway, that's just an example of a really well
Speaker 3: designed long term It seems like it takes forever to
Speaker 3: get to where you release the sheep out the back
Speaker 3: of a trailer, but it was a good example of
Speaker 3: a collaborative project involving a lot of moving parts. And
Speaker 3: so the Wild Cheap Foundation we've had a history of that.
Speaker 3: We're coming up on our forty eighth year of existence.
Speaker 3: We've actually been in existence since nineteen seventy four, but
Speaker 3: we were incorporated in nineteen seventy seven, So we're coming
Speaker 3: up on our forty eighth convention here in Reno in
Speaker 3: mid January of twenty five. But you know, our mission
Speaker 3: and our motto, our purpose is all about putting and
Speaker 3: keeping more wild sheep on the mountain. That's what we're
Speaker 3: all about. And so annually we get a cavalcade of
Speaker 3: requests for conservation projects. It might be water development, it
Speaker 3: might be prescribed burning, it might be noxious weed treatments.
Speaker 3: It might be telemetry, coloring, disease surveillance, land protection, land
Speaker 3: acquisition easements, you name it. There's a whole spectrum of
Speaker 3: kinds of conservation projects that we receive every July, and
Speaker 3: then we spend much of July excuse me much of
Speaker 3: August reviewing those and then advancing recommendations to our Board
Speaker 3: of Directors for approval. And so by August twenty ninth
Speaker 3: of this year, we had twenty two projects totally one
Speaker 3: point six million dollars that were approved by our board
Speaker 3: and as involved not only the state and provincial Fish
Speaker 3: and Wildlife agencies, might be federal land management agencies like
Speaker 3: the Bord Service or the Bureau of Land Management. It
Speaker 3: might be university researchers. It might be consultants, it might
Speaker 3: be tribes, it might be First Nations in Canada. Again,
Speaker 3: a whole spectrum of the kind of projects that we fund,
Speaker 3: and you know they're not all trap and transplant, sure,
Speaker 3: a lot of other different categories. And so this is
Speaker 3: just a great example of a project that maybe the
Speaker 3: biggest one that Wild Chief Foundation ever committed to, lightly
Speaker 3: over three hundred thousand dollars, and we had great partnerships
Speaker 3: that helped us meet that obligation.
Speaker 2: Sure, let's talk about those.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of those partners because I got
Speaker 1: to meet a few of those guys out there, representatives
Speaker 1: and it's always exciting to see the money come in
Speaker 1: for a project, but also kind of see the heart
Speaker 1: behind it and what these different partners want to bring
Speaker 1: to the table.
Speaker 3: Well exactly. You know a lot of people it's kind
Speaker 3: of like Heaven. I've never been there. I hope to
Speaker 3: get there some Well, a lot of people have that
Speaker 3: same aspiration about well maybe someday I might hunt a sheep.
Speaker 3: Well here's a chance to help volunteer and lay hands
Speaker 3: on one and help maybe put a radio collar on her,
Speaker 3: hold them still while I vet takes a blood drawer,
Speaker 3: you know, attaches a radio collar or something like that.
Speaker 3: So we had great support. Of course, Texas Bighorns Society
Speaker 3: or TBS as I keep referring to. It was instrumental
Speaker 3: working side by side with TPWD to get this thing going.
Speaker 3: It was a long I always joke about a long
Speaker 3: gestation period. And doctor Sam Cunningham, the president of Texas
Speaker 3: Biggrown Society here he's a hear, nose and throat doc
Speaker 3: in Amarilla. But if he was expecting father handing out cigars,
Speaker 3: it'd be like, this is a two year gestation period
Speaker 3: to get this baby delivered. Here's a big cigar. But
Speaker 3: TBS was huge in their leadership and so we worked
Speaker 3: with TBS as one of our thirty or so chapters
Speaker 3: in affiliates the Wild Chief Foundation has scattered around North
Speaker 3: America and beyond, and so Texas Bigger Own Society and
Speaker 3: Texas Park's and Wildlife Department made this request to us,
Speaker 3: and we said, oh, man, yeah, this is a great
Speaker 3: You know, some people referred to it as sort of
Speaker 3: the last chance or last gasp, the desert cheap in
Speaker 3: West Texas, and we certainly hope that's not the case.
Speaker 3: But it was a well thought out project that appealed
Speaker 3: to us because it was releasing desert big horn moving
Speaker 3: them from Elephant Mountain over to Franklin Mountain State Park
Speaker 3: where it was odd ed free, where it was livestock
Speaker 3: free in a state park.
Speaker 1: When we come back on More Outdoors, we're talking more
Speaker 1: with Kevin Hurley of the Wild Sheep Foundation about the
Speaker 1: transplant of desert big Horns into Franklin Mountain State Park
Speaker 1: in El Paso, Texas. Here More Outdoors. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: More Outdoors on News Top five sixty kl the This
Speaker 1: is Chester More. Download the program via the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1: More Outdoors archives going back several years, continuing our conversation
Speaker 1: with Kevin Hurley, of the Wild Cheap Foundation.
Speaker 3: Then we would go work with some of our partners
Speaker 3: to get the funding to help make this happen on
Speaker 3: the ground. And so aside from TBS, the number one
Speaker 3: partner we had was past pro Shopping Cabella's Outdoor Fund.
Speaker 3: We've had a long positive relationship with Bella's Outdoor Fund.
Speaker 3: I think over the last six years they've they've provided
Speaker 3: over six hundred thousand US to us to the Wild
Speaker 3: Cheap Foundation for a dozen or more projects from British
Speaker 3: Columbia down to south West Texas. And so Cabella's Outdoor
Speaker 3: Fund was able to send a couple of their videographers
Speaker 3: out and I think those guys went home wishing they'd
Speaker 3: brought more storage, more prodible hard drives, because they got
Speaker 3: a ton of footage and we're real anxious to see
Speaker 3: how that looks. I'm sure they're still unwanted dealing with
Speaker 3: all that footage that they captured. But our Midwest Chapter
Speaker 3: based in the Twin Cities. You know, there's no big
Speaker 3: Own Cheap in Minneapolis Saint Paul, but there's a lot
Speaker 3: of wild chief conservationists there and so the Midwest Chapter
Speaker 3: was a great partner in helping with this, and they
Speaker 3: were not able to send anybody there to help on
Speaker 3: the actual operation. But another one was the Campfire Conservation
Speaker 3: on Campfire Conservation Fund of America. They're, you know, based
Speaker 3: in Upstate New York and a lot of these are
Speaker 3: I had a chance, maybe a decade ago to go
Speaker 3: back to Upstate New York. They hosted a meeting there
Speaker 3: at their facility, and I mean they have an outdoor bar,
Speaker 3: and this is the same bar called the Prairie Dog Saloon.
Speaker 3: It's the same bar that you know Teddy Roosevelt leaned
Speaker 3: his elbow on, and Gifford Pinchot and some of those
Speaker 3: early conservationists, you know, the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts, the Vanderbilts,
Speaker 3: you know, wealthy families along the Hudson River that were
Speaker 3: really the birthplace of the North American conservation movement. And
Speaker 3: so they were able to send two of their conservation
Speaker 3: committee reps, John Warden, Parker Corbin out and I picked
Speaker 3: them up in a passo and drove them over and
Speaker 3: they spent three days, you know, immersed in a great project.
Speaker 3: And coincidentally, last night, which would have been Wednesday, the eighteenth,
Speaker 3: they presented to their conservation committee sort of a download
Speaker 3: of what went on, and the feedback I've already gotten
Speaker 3: this morning is the Campfire Conservation Committee was thrilled with
Speaker 3: that presentation and their participation. So, you know, those are
Speaker 3: some of the major, the larger partners that we got.
Speaker 3: But I mean there's a whole litany of everybody from
Speaker 3: the Water for While I Foundation based in Land of
Speaker 3: Wyoming where I used to work. They helped with some
Speaker 3: funding for guzzlers that put in over Saint Patting's Day weekend,
Speaker 3: and our Eastern chapter, the Wild Chief Foundation based in Lancaster,
Speaker 3: PA of all places. Again wildcheap conservationists lived there, and
Speaker 3: they raise money locally and help invest it in Western
Speaker 3: projects so that there are sheep on the mountain and
Speaker 3: so and then we had Houston Safari Club. Joe Vitar
Speaker 3: and his folks helped on this project as well. So
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a laundry list of cooperators on this
Speaker 3: particular project. But to us, it just it takes a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of folks working together to get something like
Speaker 3: this not only planned but pulled off. And congrats to
Speaker 3: TPWD and.
Speaker 1: T absolutely and that's really the heart of what I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about with this that this is a
Speaker 1: lot of people coming together for a conservation cause. A
Speaker 1: lot of different ways people get skin in the game
Speaker 1: to do something positive for wild sheep, but we're talking
Speaker 1: about this conservation impact. There's a document can get a
Speaker 1: Wild Cheap Foundation dot or I'll put the links up
Speaker 1: where they can download the pdf. The document will learn
Speaker 1: more about the Wild Cheap Foundation also its chapters in
Speaker 1: affiliate it's like the Texas Big ORNs Society. Incidentally, the
Speaker 1: first conservation group I ever joined, when I was nineteen
Speaker 1: years old, was the Texas Big Orn Society. I was
Speaker 1: at an event. I did not know they had a
Speaker 1: society for Texas bighorns at nineteen and I see a
Speaker 1: full body big horn and it says Texas Big Orn Society.
Speaker 1: So nineteen year old me, it was like a moth
Speaker 1: to flame and who would have thunk, you know, years
Speaker 1: later getting to just see all this sort of happen,
Speaker 1: which is which is a beautiful thing. Back then it
Speaker 1: was the Wild Cheap Foundation was the foundation for North
Speaker 1: American wild sheep. And that's a mouthful, but you know,
Speaker 1: Wild Sheep Foundation continues. That's the legacy that's the Wild
Speaker 1: Sheep Foundation. You said, it's forty eighth year.
Speaker 3: Forty Yeah, so you know, the story goes finas is
Speaker 3: the acronym foundation from the American Wild Sheep. But people said,
Speaker 3: what's the finas well? Back in the story, I always
Speaker 3: heard on a snowy weekend in February of nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 3: a bunch of experienced sheep hunters from the Michigan I'm sorry, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: and Iowa area got together at somebody's cabin for a
Speaker 3: weekend gather and you know, they each put one hundred
Speaker 3: bucks on the table and said, we ought to do
Speaker 3: something for wild sheep because they don't they don't pay
Speaker 3: their own way. And by that I'll explain that. But
Speaker 3: ten or twelve founders, you know, said we need to
Speaker 3: do something like Ducks Unlimited, but for mountain sheep. So
Speaker 3: that was the origin of the Foundation for North American
Speaker 3: Wild Sheep. And of course, forty eight years later, coming
Speaker 3: up on our fiftieth in a couple of years, some
Speaker 3: of those original founders are still alive up there in years,
Speaker 3: but we're going to focus and feature on them and
Speaker 3: thank them for their vision fifty years ago. But you
Speaker 3: know to me one of the interesting parts. And I've
Speaker 3: only been only I've only been involved with the Sheep
Speaker 3: Foundation forty five years, and so only forty five I
Speaker 3: missed the first five years. I got involved in the
Speaker 3: fall of eighty one and they helped find my graduate
Speaker 3: work at the University of Wyoming on a sheet project
Speaker 3: between Cody, Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park. They moved their
Speaker 3: office from the Twin Cities to Cody, Wyoming in September
Speaker 3: of eighty two, so I helped move the boxes, unload
Speaker 3: the boxes for the first Bana's office. And then, after
Speaker 3: thirty years with the State of Woming Gave and Fish Department,
Speaker 3: I took one night in retirement, went back to work
Speaker 3: the next morning, knocking on the door of the Sheep
Speaker 3: Foundation at seven am because I didn't have a key
Speaker 3: to get in. And it's like, what time do you
Speaker 3: people get to work? Let's go, And so they showed
Speaker 3: up about quarter to eight and said, you know, can
Speaker 3: we help you? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 3: work here. But I knew them all so but it's
Speaker 3: been a great organization. You know, our membership right now
Speaker 3: is plus or minus either side of eleven thousand. It's
Speaker 3: not a lot of members. You know, you look at
Speaker 3: say Ducks Unlimited, I mean millions of members globally, something
Speaker 3: like the Rocky Mountain OK Foundation. I joined the first
Speaker 3: year it came out in nineteen eighty four, but Army
Speaker 3: f has done great work for elk and their habitats
Speaker 3: for forty years. But the Sheep Foundation, what's really unique.
Speaker 3: We have such an incredible, dedicated and generous membership, some
Speaker 3: of whom have never and may never get a chance
Speaker 3: to hunt a sheep, but they still do, you know,
Speaker 3: provide their blood, sweat and tears, as Grey Thornton says,
Speaker 3: you know, their time, their treasure, their talent in the
Speaker 3: interest of wild cheap conservation. And that's what's really gratifying
Speaker 3: to me is the level of commitment that our members have,
Speaker 3: even though you know they may pass this earth and
Speaker 3: never have gotten a chance to hunt a sheep, which
Speaker 3: is a big aspiration for a lot of people. So
Speaker 3: it's it's a really cool bunch of people. And I've
Speaker 3: got all kinds of anecdotes and why I'm such a
Speaker 3: lifer for forty five years with the foundation and various capacities,
Speaker 3: but it's it's just a great group that's really focused.
Speaker 3: You know, remember the old you know, mile wide, inch deep.
Speaker 3: We're an inch wide and a mile deep. We are
Speaker 3: focused on wild sheep and their populations and their habitats.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I like in terms of
Speaker 1: covering all of this it's the versity of projects they're supported.
Speaker 1: So you go from a translocation in Texas to another
Speaker 1: location in Texas, very important, historical, and then you got
Speaker 1: really cutting edg stuff like working with Working Dogs for Conservation.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that project?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And so Working Dogs for Conservation they have a
Speaker 3: great website, they have a great team. They have a
Speaker 3: field station just ten twelve miles east of Missoula, Montana.
Speaker 3: But you can find information on their website Working Dogs
Speaker 3: for Conservation. But they've got a staff of maybe twenty
Speaker 3: people and maybe forty five dogs. And these are not
Speaker 3: special breeds or especially trained. These are pound puppies, rescue
Speaker 3: dogs that were problematic for somebody else. But they've got
Speaker 3: really good dog handlers, dog trainers.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll talk more about Working Dogs
Speaker 1: for Conservation and Wild sheep with Kevin Hurley of the
Speaker 1: Wild Sheep Foundation. Welcome back to More Outdoors on News
Speaker 1: Top five to sixty klv I wrapping up our conversation
Speaker 1: with Kevin Hurley of the Wild Sheep Foundation.
Speaker 3: Doctor Pete Coppolilo, who's the execut director there and his staff.
Speaker 3: They work on a variety of conservation projects and it
Speaker 3: might be everything from chronic wasting disease detection to you know,
Speaker 3: port duty where they're looking for invasive weed seeds might
Speaker 3: come in in a palette of you know, produce imported
Speaker 3: from Africa or somewhere. They do all kinds of work.
Speaker 3: But what we've worked with them on the last five
Speaker 3: years is can these dogs be trained to detect michael
Speaker 3: plasma over them on the mv scent residue smell either
Speaker 3: in peco pellets from a captured sheep or maybe they
Speaker 3: find some on a landscape. They don't know which sheep
Speaker 3: positive them, but can they detect that? And what seems
Speaker 3: to be the evolution of the diagnostics is it's better
Speaker 3: on nasal swabs, you know, so take it basically they're
Speaker 3: a big Q tip and run it around the inside
Speaker 3: of a big orange nose and then they can set
Speaker 3: up trials where the dogs have you know, eight or
Speaker 3: so canisters to choose from, and they've got all kinds
Speaker 3: of cool videos on their website and I just saw
Speaker 3: another cool one yesterday. But they'll prial these dogs to
Speaker 3: see which which of the canisters they detect on, and
Speaker 3: then the term is alert, you know, which they hit
Speaker 3: on or start wagging their tail. But they'll go to
Speaker 3: this circular sense station with maybe eight canisters on it,
Speaker 3: and maybe there's some empties or there's some dummy or rogue,
Speaker 3: you know, decoy type sense. But if they can zero
Speaker 3: in on the one that's got a swab that's positive
Speaker 3: for MOV, those dogs will sit down and just alert
Speaker 3: and I mean they're just like hyped up, ready to go.
Speaker 3: And so there's some really cool footage on the Working
Speaker 3: Dogs website, but it's it's amazing. I mean, most people
Speaker 3: are dog lovers, and what dogs can sense and smell
Speaker 3: and detect buy outpaces anything we can come up with.
Speaker 3: And so what we've done is, I think in partnership
Speaker 3: with Working Dogs for Conservation in our state and provincial
Speaker 3: and tribal First Nation partners around the West, is Working
Speaker 3: Dogs is getting more and more samples that they can
Speaker 3: train the dogs on. And I think the three best
Speaker 3: dogs their detection rate or MOV off of a diluted,
Speaker 3: you know, diminished nasal swab sample. Their best dog is
Speaker 3: hitting at one hundred percent detection. I think their second
Speaker 3: best dog is in that ninety two to ninety three
Speaker 3: percent accuracy range, and the third dogs in the eighty
Speaker 3: five to eighty seven percent range. So it's not foolproof,
Speaker 3: but these dogs can alert and detect the presence of
Speaker 3: this pathogen. Well, how does that translate to an on
Speaker 3: the ground situation? And I'll go back a couple of
Speaker 3: years to Todd Norden in Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
Speaker 3: We had the working Dogs folks come with their dog
Speaker 3: to a capture in the Panhandle of Nebraska. We also
Speaker 3: had doctor Kate Hibert from Washington State University who's are
Speaker 3: Wild Cheap Disease Research Chair that wazoo. She came with
Speaker 3: a field PCR unit called a biomeme. And what we
Speaker 3: were really interested in, what we talked about possibly deploying
Speaker 3: in Texas two weeks ago, would help a manage make
Speaker 3: a real time decision like Okay, we're gonna draw blood,
Speaker 3: We're gonna take nasal swabs and in fact, Texas wound
Speaker 3: up flying thirty or more samples on day one from Alpine.
Speaker 3: Texas tried to get them to Pullman, Washington, but couldn't
Speaker 3: land there because a low cloud cover. Had to land
Speaker 3: in Lewiston, Idaho, and have somebody drive down from the
Speaker 3: university and drive the samples back up. But what it
Speaker 3: would do is help a manager make a field real
Speaker 3: time decision that says, okay, according to the biome unit
Speaker 3: the field PCR, we have indications that that you you
Speaker 3: number three or you number eight maybe positive. If the
Speaker 3: dogs alert and detect on that, maybe there's a way
Speaker 3: to stratify that and say, well, this one's for sure
Speaker 3: gonna have it. Handing the laboratory results from the Washington
Speaker 3: Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab or wattle up in Pullman, and
Speaker 3: so the dogs can help with a field decision. What
Speaker 3: do we do. Do we turn that sheep back on
Speaker 3: the mountain, do we put that one in a different trailer?
Speaker 3: Do we plan to take them to captivity? And in
Speaker 3: some cases there's been positive sheep that have big hornes
Speaker 3: that have been euthanized down right then. But in the
Speaker 3: in the Texas case, two weeks ago, those first thirty
Speaker 3: plus samples were all negative, and so TPWD and TVs
Speaker 3: went forward and we all mobilized from Elephant Mountain, going
Speaker 3: down to the Interstate ten to Olpasso and Freuilin and
Speaker 3: Hernandez got the call from Wattle that's a green light.
Speaker 3: These are all clear, all negative, and so, you know,
Speaker 3: really a great feeling to know that these were all clean.
Speaker 3: If there had been odd ed contact on or near
Speaker 3: Elephant Mountain, at least in the shape that were caught,
Speaker 3: they hadn't transmitted that pathogen yet, and so I know
Speaker 3: there was a real sense of urgency on the part
Speaker 3: of TPWD and TBS. It's like the whole point of
Speaker 3: the Franklin Mountains was to get a second source population established.
Speaker 3: You know the old adage don't put all your eggs
Speaker 3: in one basket. Well, if if your basket is Elephant
Speaker 3: Mountain and somehow that's been your source for decades and
Speaker 3: then it's unavailable because of contamination or disease infection problems,
Speaker 3: they really wanted to get a second herd started at
Speaker 3: Franklin Mountains. That's MV free and so moving seventy seven cheap,
Speaker 3: and those females were all ultrasounded and I think five
Speaker 3: out of six, you know, eighty four percent, And I
Speaker 3: believe there was forty u's total and thirty seven rams,
Speaker 3: so you know, forty of the US. Do the math,
Speaker 3: you know what's eighty four percent of that? But I
Speaker 3: mean there's going to be some babies hitting the ground
Speaker 3: in the next couple of months at Franklin Mountain State Park.
Speaker 3: So it was a really good effort. But working dogs
Speaker 3: has played a great role, not only in the Nebraska situation,
Speaker 3: not necessarily in the Texas, but it helps the decision
Speaker 3: makers make an informed decision at the time of we've
Speaker 3: got sheep in hand, sheep in the trailer, Now what
Speaker 3: do we.
Speaker 2: Do with them.
Speaker 1: Another project we want to talk about, because water is
Speaker 1: a recurring role in desert big horn sheep populations, is
Speaker 1: the Muddy Mountains project. This is in the Conservation Impact document,
Speaker 1: and you know it seems to be a crucial.
Speaker 2: Area in that for desert big horns.
Speaker 1: And let's talk about the water catchment situation in general,
Speaker 1: and then how this particular one of the Muddy Mountains
Speaker 1: may have a really positive impact for many years.
Speaker 3: Well just you know, if you look at there's at
Speaker 3: least seven southwestern states that have desert bighorn sheep and
Speaker 3: so California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado in the very
Speaker 3: southwest corner Utah, Nevada, of course, and then all the
Speaker 3: way into Mexico. Six states in Mexico. And so water
Speaker 3: in the desert is very important and it's it's helped
Speaker 3: recover desert bigger on populations in many of those jurisdictions.
Speaker 3: And so again with our network of chapters and affiliates,
Speaker 3: the Wild Cheap Foundation works closely with a lot of
Speaker 3: our chapters affiliates partners on those southwestern US projects. But I'm,
Speaker 3: you know, from Wyoming, and so I remember we did
Speaker 3: guzzler projects in Wyoming and people would think, boy, do
Speaker 3: you really need water development there? Yeah, Wyoming is high, desert, cold,
Speaker 3: but you know, the need is still there. There. Can
Speaker 3: talk about guzzler projects in British Columbia, well, why God,
Speaker 3: there's all kinds of snow and water in BC. Why
Speaker 3: But the point is water development can help drive population
Speaker 3: dynamics of a wild sheep population, whether it's a desert
Speaker 3: or a rocky or California or some other subspecies.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get more information on how
Speaker 1: you can get involved with the Wild Sheep Foundation, go
Speaker 1: to Wildshepfoundation dot org. I'm a proud member also in
Speaker 1: Texas to Texas Bighorn Society, great organization. Wild Sheep are
Speaker 1: very important to me on a personal level, but they're
Speaker 1: also very important to the legacy of wildlife in North America.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been doing More Outdoors for twenty five years,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful for everyone who ever listened to this program.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for supporting all the work that
Speaker 1: I've done, all the work I do. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to More Outdoors all of these years. You can
Speaker 1: follow me at the chesterom A're on Instagram, Higher Calling
Speaker 1: dot net my blog. Also catch my Dark Outdoors podcast.
Speaker 1: God bless and have a great out there doors weekend