DENVER — On Friday, a Colorado federal judge reinforced a major conservation victory for bighorn sheep conservation on the Rio Grande National Forest. The court granted a motion to remand the decision to create the Wishbone Allotment back to the U.S. Forest Service, requiring thorough assessment before domestic sheep grazing can be authorized on the allotment.

Last spring, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Forest Service unlawfully disregarded scientific evidence and arbitrarily altered the results of its disease ‘Risk of Contact’ modeling when it approved domestic sheep grazing on the Rio Grande National Forest near Creede, Colorado in 2018. The 10th Circuit sent the case back to the Colorado District Court to determine the appropriate remedy. The Forest Service had approved the creation of the Wishbone domestic sheep allotment in close proximity to bighorn sheep core habitats despite concluding in 2013 and 2015 that contact with domestic sheep posed a high level of disease risk to the area’s bighorn sheep populations. The remand ensures that domestic sheep will remain off of the allotment unless the Forest Service can prove it’s safe for bighorns, which is unlikely.

“Bighorn sheep on public land should be safe from the risk of lethal disease from domestic sheep, and federal agencies can’t ignore the reality on the ground,” said Delaney Rudy, Colorado Director for the Western Watersheds Project. “The court’s remand affirms the Forest Service’s responsibility to ensure commercial livestock grazing doesn’t imperil native wildlife.”

This contact is dangerous because of two deadly pathogens, Mannheimia haemolycta and Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, that domestic sheep carry and transmit to bighorn sheep. Once a wild sheep is infected through contact with a domestic sheep, they carry that pathogen back to their herd and even to other herds, which can lead to catastrophic, all-age die-offs. There are currently at least seven bighorn herds in Colorado that are experiencing population collapse due to illnesses from domestic sheep.

“Bighorn sheep are core to Colorado’s identity and living symbols of rugged, wild landscapes,” said Laurie Rule, senior attorney at Advocates for the West, who represented conservation organizations in the lawsuit. “We’re glad the court agreed that sending back the Forest Service decision authorizing domestic sheep grazing on the Wishbone Allotment is the correct remedy for the multiple legal violations found by the 10th Circuit. It’s also the right thing to do so that we don’t lose decades of progress to conserve a Western icon.”

The Forest Service itself has recognized disease as “the greatest concern for bighorn sheep population persistence [in] the Rio Grande National Forest.” Bighorn sheep on the Rio Grande National Forest are designated as a species of conservation concern, a designation that requires all agency actions to be analyzed for their potential impact to bighorn sheep and to maintain bighorn sheep population viability.

“This order from the court reinforces what should have been clear all along: our public lands must be managed based on science and for the benefit of wildlife, not bent to accommodate private interests,” said Chris Krupp, public lands attorney with WildEarth Guardians. “Bighorn sheep pay the price when agencies ignore the risks of contact with domestic sheep, and this ruling makes clear that sacrificing wildlife for profit is not an acceptable tradeoff.”

During the era of Western settlement, bighorn sheep were wiped out as pathogens carried by domestic sheep were transmitted to native bighorns. By the early 1900s, bighorns had vanished from several states, with only a few thousand remaining from an estimated historic population of 1.5 to 2 million. Following more than six decades of extensive and costly restoration efforts, bighorn sheep have now been recovered to approximately 10% of their historic range.

Four bighorn herds inhabit national forest lands near the newly-invented Wishbone Allotment: the San Luis Peak, Bellows Creek, Bristol Head and Rock Creek herds. Three other bighorn populations live within easy traveling distance for a bighorn ram: the Weminuche population to the south, the Natural Arch/Carnero population to the east, and the San Juan West population to the west. Overall, approximately 1,100 bighorn sheep that were at risk from domestic sheep grazing on the Wishbone Allotment are now spared from that threat.

In last spring’s decision, the 10th Circuit held that the Forest Service’s explanation for approving the Wishbone Allotment relied “on no science or data, and in fact contradicts the data in the record about bighorn sheep movement and permittees’ compliance with project design features.”

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