00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't forget anything, all right, I want to get to I want to do all the introductions and explain where we're at. But first I've a quick question, is based off of painting that I just ran into in the entryway of the Wild Cheap Foundation. Um do wolves get after big horns? I think I think, um mountain line and clay mountain line probably a little bit more of a problem, certainly in the lower forty eight, But yeah, wolves definitely into a thin horn habitat and and big time up in BC and in Alberta. You bet. It just seems like they, I don't know, man, just feels like like a little bit out of there, like that kind of country, seems a little bit out of their area of expertise. But they've him in the winter or what the big horn like down here in lower forty eight in the winter, Well they'll they'll hit them different times of a year. But yeah, absolutely, Uh further south desert big horns. She has great just referenced mountain lions are a little bit tougher, tougher on sheep than wolves, but uh, yeah, it's uh, it's a tough place to make a living. Have there been cases where Mexican gray wolves have killed desert big horns. Don't know about that yet, you know, I don't. I don't have any documentation of that. I have not heard that, but I'm sure they would. Yeah. Man, it seems like a formidable like when you when you factor the topography and then just like the horns structure and stuff, it seems like a formidable foe. They really are. If you if you look at the way the animals built, you know, the way their eyes are positioned on their heads. If you look at these mounts in this room, just just look it. You know how much they see. Uh, you know, their greatest defense. They see a long ways, a lot further than than we do. If you look at the country in which they live, it's the topography is tough. There's always escaped terrain and places for those animals to escape. So you know they've survived. Uh, they've adapted and and learned to deal with predator issues through time. But yeah, it's it's tough. There's a if you're there's a guy I can't remember his name, the professor at University of Alaska at Fairbanks, and he wrote like a natural history book about Alaska, and in and he talks about an eyewitness account of a friend of his who watched a single Linx chase a doll ram donna, gully, jump on its back and kill it with a bike to the basement's neck. Yep, a lynx who's like a snowshoe hair specialist. Well, it's just not it's it's not just the four legged predators either. You have eagles and and other things. In fact, I've observed firsthand golden eagles. I was hiking an area one time, uh, working with sheep, and in overhead I saw a lamb go by it. No really, Oh yeah, so it's it's not just the four legged prey. That's pretty nuts. I heard that they kill them, But then though they carried him off, I thought they just like ran them off. They somehow scared him or spooked him or ran them off ledges and then killed him. Yeah, observed it firsthand. They picked them up. You know, they're small, tiny, a little lamb, Yeah, exactly. We watched a golden eagle spend twenty minutes working over a bull elk. Here's two gold two working over a bull dive bomb in his head. And you could tell us boy did not like he was agitated. Man, I've flown surveys and almost had them land in the helicopter with you, and they are a huge all right, so we we should probably so, Like I said, we're at the you guys called the World Headquarters, World Headquarters, Wildchief Foundation, World Headquarters, Wild Cheap Foundation, Bozeman, Montana. Still in Bozeman, Still in Boseman. It's almost almost Belgrade and almost four corners, but it's it's a Bozeman address. So if I write you a letter, I proposeman, Um, let's go around do uh, let's go around to introductions. We'll do it like I like to do it, as though I'm dealing cards. And so you're up. Uh. Garrett Longs on the marketing and communications director here Uh Exhibits and sponsors manager, store manager, UM what else? Cre you clean? Toilet clean toilets um on a frequent basis. And I came over here just recently, about three months ago. I previously was the conservation leader over at Sitka UM sick of gear just down the road, UM, and came over here to just do real conservation work, and it's been a blast. Man, it's been pretty cool. So you guys probably have a you probably had a relationship with this organization when you were there, because I know Sake of does a lot of stuff in support of Yeah, so so my job there it was actually kind of inverse. So what it is here. I I took in all the contracts, conservation contracts, and decided what we spent money on prioritized conservation organizations. So it was great actually coming to the Wild Cheap Foundation because they were one of one of the groups that I use as an example, you know, going through like forms and things like that with other organizations like hey, this is what we're looking for. These are the type of projects we want to fund, um all that kind of stuff. So it was pretty cool getting a call from Gray But yeah, I had worked with them a lot, and then I still work with them over there a lot too because they support us very heavily. That's great, Go ahead, sir uh Clay Brewer. I'm the Big Horn program lead UH conservation director for the Wild Chief Foundation. I worked for almost thirty years Texas Departs and while off department was the did a lot of things. Was the the big Horn mule deer prong horn guy for years. UH served in various leadership roles. UH actually served as the interim Widlife director for a year and a half and and UH So my experience I have UH primarily on the ground experience. UM, I'm not necessarily enamored with these sorts of things that we're doing here today. I've I've spent my life out in the middle of nowhere, and I enjoy that that aspect of it. So UH, I spent the majority of my my career restoring cheap big horn cheap in Texas. They were extrapated by about nineteen sixty, and so through our efforts that as late as nineteen sixty and then got extrapated. The last documented sighting of a native Texas big horn occurred October of nineteen fifty eight. In the series D you have Little Mountains, which is a little bit south of U of the Guadaloupe Mountains. Usually we're talking about something vanishing. It's twenty years earlier. Nineteen sixty was what what we guess. Anyway, So after that, UH, lots of work, lots of transplants, lots of things, going on. But uh, bighorns sheep at late eighteen hundred population levels right now, was anybody okay? In nineteen sixty in Texas after the last one vanished? Was it? What a day later they started recovery? I mean, were they were already paying attention to it as they were on their way out. Well, there was a guy hired in the forties and uh, this is a guy by the name of Birch Carson. He was hired to document the decline a bighorn cheap in Texas. And so today, well I give I'll give you my experience. I was a younger guy then and and was hiking through the mountains and it was actually, uh, we we did and still got all of our own sheep hunts. So I was preparing the first first had a sheep hunter coming here. You mean the state guys, State of Texas. Yes, and you guys give out how many tags every year? Well it varies down now fifteen sixteen seventeen tags every year. So we've come along ways. So if you draw a big horn tag in Texas, you go out and hunt with a you go out or guided by a state biologist. Or well, if you buy a state tag. Uh, they're also private landowner tags. That's a little bit different. Um. Some some hunters prefer to bring their own their own guide, which which is fine. We like that too. Um it makes us no difference. But uh so anywather you you asked me about the did they see it coming? And and um, Texas was no different than the rest of the states where you you hear about the domestic sheep issues. And we lost our sheep for the very same reasons. And so a guy by the name of Birch Carson was hired in the forties to document the disappearance of big horn sheep in Texas. And so I was getting ready for sheep hunt, and I was hiking along that It was in January, and it was pretty cool, cool in the mountains, and um, so I was. I was walking down the ridge, and I decided to get off the ridge and I started hiking down a deer trail. And so I walked the deer trail for a ways and I came into an opening, a small bowl in the bottom of these three just three knobs around and and he got steel. The wind stop blowing and it got steel. And I thought, man, this would be a great place to eat my lunch, took my pack frame off, sat out on the ground. I looked over on the ground. It said there was a carving in the rocket. It said W. B. Carson, sheep inspector in ninety And so he became a hobby of mine. Uh. I spent a lot of time by myself, and so I started looking for these things. And every time I thought I was the only human being to ever see this, I would look around on the ground and I would find another carving and it would say cheap inspector, Uh Burt W B. Carson. And so I found caves the guy lived in. There's one. There's a cave in the Texas Mountains where the guy's clothes are still hanging in the cave today. And so so he documented the decline. That's nuts man, That's like Boone and Boone's day, right through names on. Oh, it's it's it's interesting history. There there's a a guy named Bob Anderson. You guys are probably familiar with great rams one to three. Um. He became interested in in Birch Carson and so he uh, he actually wrote a book, He's got one. I wrote the forward for his book and and Uh, he never has published it. He hadn't done anything with it, so he's trying to figure out who his audience was. But it's called something like the Desert Wonder or something like that. So the guy was a taxidermist and just interesting history. World War two veteran. Uh was injured in World War Two and came back and hiked those mountains with a limp and so, you know, pretty rough country. So uh So a short time later, in the mid fifties, there was a cooperative agreement developed between the the at that time, the Texas Game Fish and I wish your commission um boone and Crockett Club, Arizona Game and Fish Department. Uh, I'm trying to remember who else Wildlife Management Institute. Uh we brought sheep in from Arizona and uh try and in the early years there, uh you know, in the early nineteen hundreds, like most jurisdictions, it was people focused on protections. Uh there were like in Texas nineteen o three there was a hunting prohibition enacted and so then then in the mid fifties it was propagation. Um. You know, there's always a joke running around in those days. Most states, the Desert Bighorn Council was formed in the fifties because every state was in the same boat. And uh, some people would have you know, they only had two sheep left, and they knew him by name, you know, and Bob didn't feel so well. It was it was kind of the joke, the running joke, and so so anyway, so propagation efforts were implemented in the mid nineteen fifties and and since that time, UH two seven while sheeper translocated to Texas. Uh coming out of Arizona, no different places. I'm sorry, and I think I think I have those numbers wrong. It's more like it's it's it's uh. I think a total of a hundred and seven came from Nevada, thirty one from Arizona, six from Mexico, and too from Utah. So that's the lineage of of today's desert bighorn populations in Texas. And so, uh so we worked together. We we traded. In the early years, we traded Arizona, UH four pronghorn they they had, they were short on pronghorn at that time. Texas had plenty of prong horns. So we would swamp animals and and more recently, I can tell you I was at a in in those days. The it was a finale convention, and people were coming by my booth from the state of Nevada, and so we're pretty upset with Texas. And I couldn't figure out why, what the what the story was, and I thought, man, just having a bad day. And so later on, I, uh, I was reading newspaper and the headlines with letters about three inches big said state of Nevada trades turkeys for big orange sheep. And so the the the Nevadas were not real happy about that trade, and and so but if it if it were not for that, then none of us would have any wildlife. Um, and so as as time went on in our case, Uh, what's interesting about that is the landowners. You know, we had problems with with disease issues in the thirties and and lost all of our sheep later on. It was a slow progression, we lost those sheep. And so we worked Texas a private landowners state, uh ninety seven percent privately owned, but uh domestic sheep. Landowners raised domestic sheep. And then later on the land the very landowners that we worked with, that where the problems occurred years ago. Are the very same landowners that helped us restore sheep today their descendants and so we did that together. And so, like I said, today we're probably eighteen hundred animals. Um, so we've surpassed the late the late eighteen hundred population levels and and numbers continue to spandu expand populations continue to grow, and so so far, so good. Uh but it only took you know, sixty years or so or seventy years for that to happen. Start figuring out. Yeah, we'll dig into that whole story called Bunch's interesting and then honest of course, go ahead. Scott Peckham, I'm the big game ecologist for the Confederated Tribes of the Matila Indian Reservation in northeast Oregon in southeast Washington. So I work on anything pur view of the big game headline and uh so wear a lot of hats. I should tell you all about the Elk tag I drew. That would be good. I heard extreme in the southeast corner of the state. You know it real well. Points I've seen some big animals in that part of the country. But I know people that really know, really well. I know the sheep country better than the Elk country there, but I do see big bulls in there when I'm doing sheep work. So so you you focus on sheep in that area. Uh. Typically yeah, in in Southeast Washington, I'm usually up there working on the sort of the Hell's Canyon initiative work that's going on. Um, you you back up like like you inform and back up the tribe's perspective on big game management exactly, because that's interesting because you're actually looking at two different states. Yes, yeah, almost three, but yeah, to both Southeast Washington. So there's three tribes under under one treaty UM, the Walla Walla, Cayuse and you Matila Um and they are traditional territory expanded that the state boundaries there. So most of the northern Blue Mountains were towards um Past Look, Grand Oregon, down south towards John Day, so parts of various basins. So what's your like, what's your professional mandate? Then? To basically protect, conserve and restore big game populations and their habitat. That's our program mission and that's that's a directive coming from those tribes. Yes, we have a first foods mission for our Department Natural Resources which is fairly well staffy of about a hundred employees, and d and R itself. Our wildlife programs pretty small about nine employees. Um. But yeah, under the big game mantra, we are that's our directive to protect, restore, and enhance habitat and populations. And I'm guessing you most coordinate with states and all the time. Yea, we work on because basically a lot of the wildlife habitat where the treaty hunting occurs, where the rights are allowed to exercise or treaty hunting right is on federal public lands. So we work with the land managers of BLM and Force Service, and then we work with the states obviously because they tend to do more of the population level management, so we coordinate with them pretty closely like the Feds. Got the Feds are administering a lot of the landscape, but the states are administering a lot of the wildlife a lands exactly, so decisions about land use and land management planning. We're very involved in that with the with the four Service and BLM, and you can spend a lot to have looking at sheep I do that is that unfortunate? Is that a high priority Um, i'd say yes, just conservation wise, Um, the tribe is is very interested in expanding UM populations of sheep. We have a lot of historically good sheep habitat and in those parts of the country. Um, you've been I think you've been to Hell's Canyon. Yeah, but I've gone out looking at big horns and that those populations have struggled. Um. So there's a lot of good work that could be done, and so I think that's where our interest is. Um. Obviously there's you've probably heard about the mule deer issues that are going on. We have, we do have declines and mule deer populations, and but elk are pretty stable, large populations of elk in the Blue Mountains, which you'll get to see. Um. But yeah, sheep is a sort of our biggest conservation concern on on the big game front. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Was that because things are getting worse, because they could be so much better? Um. I think in our corner of the world there it's we're sort of at a stagnant stagnant sort of population has leveled off, So I think we could there's a lot we can improve. I think we can make some gains for sure, for sure, but we're not We haven't had a disease, a large die off in several years, but we're only a little ways away from one. We're always on the cusps. So I think there's a lot of work we can do and this kind of forum is a good place to discuss that. And go ahead. Steve gray Thornton, I'm the president of CEO UM. We're here obviously at the at the World headquarters, but we also maintain offices and Cody. We have UM an education coordinator in Nevada. Clay is remote in Texas. We've got a lobbyist in Washington, d c. And in our Montana conservation director is also in Germany, so we we base international operations out of Germany. We work in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan to Jakostan. Isn't it funny how everyone hates lobbyists, But lobbyists can come from any like people just like are like, oh, we lobbyists and you registered. That must be negative. But to think that they are like conservation lobbyists, you know, visional lobbyists, like some guy out to do something evil, you know he does he does he does smoke cigars, so he plays you know, he plays that lobbyist role. Well, you know, we other lobbying on behalf of wild but he's lobbying on behalf of you know, wild sheep and wild Chief restoration. But you know, we called him our advocate and and our legislative affairs director and finally just just just call me a obvious. That's what everyone knows that I am. So you know, we just cut to the chase, and that's what he is. We were just I was just back with him two weeks ago, spent three days advocate advocating for big horn sheep programs and tin horn cheap programs. So when you when you guys are doing that, like when you're down in d c um, what are are you meeting with it? Do you tend to be meeting with individual politicians? Defind me meeting like more on the agency level both. So we we meet with the federal agencies. So all the Land Management U s U S four service. Most bighorn sheep live on uh US for SARS LAMB. But in claim what eighty somewhat percent of bighorn chep live on on the force um BLM. Interesting enough, as huge holdings in Alaska. Alaska's got of all doll sheep and thin horn sheep in North America, so pretty pretty huge population there, forty to fifty dollar sheep. Um. So we we you know, we meet with the BLM, we meet with a four service at times, will meet with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, at times, will meet with the National Park Service, and then on the hill will we'll meet with representatives and senators and their staff. So um, pretty pretty broad bay. See. The issues that we're dealing with are primarily land use issues, UM, some grazing issues and um separation issues between domestic sheep and bighorn sheep and now even sinhorn sheep. Yeah. That that that's why I'd like to get you in spensive time, Max. I think that's that's kind of seems like where so much of the conversation is right now around sheep. I want to do a little bit of backing up and I'll let you guys. You guys just kind of decide by making quick glances among each other to see who should handle what. But I want to like really quickly bring people up to speed on just like sheep taxonomy, which I think can be a little bit confusing. We don't need to go global. We'll just keep it North America. But is a fair to is like when you say, like bighorn thin horn, is that a fair? Is that a fair? If you're gonna take all of our country sheep or US and Canada, it makes some sort of division. It seems like people start with bighorn thin horn. You bet so, so you have you know, let's let's take North America's as Mexico, US and Canada perfect um so In in Mexico you have the desert bighorn sheep. Um in in the lower forty eight you have the rocky mountain bighorn sheep and the desert big worn sheep. Then we've got you know, there's kind of uh um splitters and lumpers. There's there's some divisions that come off of there's a California bighorn sheep that's really a rocky mountain and it didn't come from California, came from British Columbia of all places. Um, there's a Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep. There's a Peninsula desert bighorn sheep. So there's there's a bunch of kind of subspecies. But the bottom line is there's desert, big worn sheep, rocky mountain bighorn sheep, and then as we go north, you've got the stone sheep, which is primarily a Northern Britge Columbia and that's a thin horn sheep. That's a thin horn. And then the white sheep is a doll. So the stone sheep range in BC UM depends on the research you're looking at, but there's some new DNA studies that are that are pushing to the point that that's really the only place they are uh, and that the stone sheep, and we still call them that, but the stone sheep that are in in the Yukon territory are actually fan in sheep or just a a cross if you will, and dark pelliage of a cross between a white sheep a doll sheep and the stone sheep and the doll sheep are in Alaska, Yukon and Northwestern or just the color phase of the dolls. Yeah, which really irritates people because if you you know, you think you got your four North American wild cheep right, like that's a big thing. You want to get your desert, your rocky mountain your stones and your dolls. But you know they're starting to say and explain this to me earlier. Now they're going, well, maybe that dolls is just that, or that stones what you think is the stones is actually just a color phase of an actual doll. So would be like you going around and saying, man, yeah, I've I've shot a black bear and a grizzly bear, and then finding out actually your black bear was or your what you think was your grizzly bear or just a brown phase black bear. Yeah, I got you. But but like when you get up, I want to confuse myself, don't. I want to stay stay below the US Canada border for a minute. When you hear of the California, the California is a rocky, And then you hear in the old days that people have said either the Audubon was a rocky in the Missouri River bricks. We actually have an Audubon in our conference room now extinct, although there's some debate on that with with DNA, you know, the the DNA studies that we can do now and the research, you know, the samples we can use. Um, there's even some conflict of what or not the Audubon was truly a set brit substance that's I was reading about recently. But the bottom line is we've we've repatriated big horn sheep into the area that the Audubon was the Missouri River breaks, which just kind of the classic beautiful, big, rocky mountain sheep of of Montana. And then so now jump up into Canada and going up into Alaska, like at the time of European contact, would it just looked like one continuous string of sheep that just happened to get whiter the more farther north you went. Or were those populations like broken up? No, they were broken up, And um, you know there is there is certainly a difference between a bighorn sheep and a thin horn sheep. Um, so that the thin horn sheep and I don't know exactly what latitude they're they're above, but um, you know those the stones and the dolls definitely look different than than a rocky mountain big horn, the rocky mountain bighorn or down in southern b c um, you know, the the front of the Rockies in Alberta, and then basically go down through the Dakotas a little bit in Nebraska, um Clay was just in Oklahoma. We now have a bighorn sheep in Oklahoma, um and then desert in Texas. And then you kind of as you go west, um and and and further south, you get into the deserts. But there's some some states that have both. Nevada has the Nelson Bighorn, Rocky Mountain bighorn, and Colorado around I'm sorry California bighorn, but we really treat those. We treat the California and the Rocky is the same. If if you look at the work and how it was done. You know, everybody names something in the in the eighteen hundreds, they everybody threw a label on it. And and then there was a guy named Colwan about nineteen forty or so, uh that that actually maybe the sixties, Uh, I can't remember exactly, but anyway, he did a lot of the original work, and they were measuring skulls and horns and and look at it different ways. Well in the nineties, Uh, Rob Ramy and John wey Housing uh did some of that same work. And when it all came out, I mean, I guess the short and I tend to think simple and cheaper sheep. Uh, and and they described stones and dolls to the north. So it's really to two species rocky mountain or or big orange sheep to the south, and and uh, thin horns to the north. And then the subspecies they described three rocky mountains. They said California's are the same. And there's lots of discussion, a lot of states don't agree, and a lot of a lot of folks go round and round over that. But then they were Sierra Nevada and deserts and uh, but there were they were measuring orbitals and taking various gold measurements and uh, this will be ironed out very soon that the genomics work that's occurring right now will answer every one of these questions. Just so just stand by. It's coming. Yeah. It's interesting to watch the way the genetics work has changed, because when I was working on I was working in my book American Buffalo, and you read, you know, back a hundred years and people had there were seven different kinds, you know, and it was mostly just different people not orchestrating their activities. But we're seeing something somewhere and giving it a name, and seeing something somewhere giving it a name, and then always very eager to identify UH populations that weren't there anymore and have it be that it was something entirely different. In Texas, they had Texana, Uh, they felt they had a different subspecies in Texas. It was most likely Mexicana that subspecies, so it wasn't unique. But you'll still hear people talk about that, are there any places in uh? Are there any places in Canada where a big horn and a thin horn sheep would run into each other? You know, I've thought about that. In fact, we were kicking around that that very thing earlier and and it's uh, honestly no. But again, sheep or sheep, um? You know, they they uh for for what we know, the chances of them crossing paths probably slammed the none just the habitat that they use and those sorts of things. But they're like they're geographically separated by barriers that they're not likely to cross. You guys have some cool graphics in here that show what the where the popular the population distribution now relative to when things were really dire and bad, relative to when things were like relatively unexploited to what year do you have to go back um before you hit like what would have been kind of like pre contact baseline, meaning no extrapated like no extrapated regional, no regional extra pations. You know, that's that's a very tough question. There was a seaton in the earnest seaton, yeah, you know, or were the numbers one point five to to millions something something so exactly, there's no doubt about it. And and there are folks today that will they will argue with those numbers are a lot more effective in arguing those numbers than I am. At least the confidence intervals really wide on well exactly exactly, and so you know that that's a tough thing. But you know, if you if you try to read you know, some of the accounts Lewis and Clarks, and you know how much did they you know, they talked about many many animals. I don't know what that means. Uh, but if you you know all the way, you you can trace some of that. It's particularly desert big horns, uh, you know, seventeen hundreds and things like that. When the kunky stators were traveling, you know, the missions, the priests described what they observed and it's so it's pretty interesting. But the numbers are always tough. Um. You know, if you look at in the fifties, what we do know is that numbers have probably declined to about fifteen thousand, seventeen thousand animals something like that, So they got pretty low. So unless Seaton was wildly off, there was still a big reduction. It was a far more than their work today. You know, in terms of counting numbers. You guys familiar with how for a long time the fashionable number for bison was sixty million. And like you look into where that number came from, Well, Seaton kind of like collated the whole thing, but it came from basically a big herd going by. It seemed to take days to go by. Later, Colonel Dodge of Dodge City infamy has a conversation with another guy who saw the same thing, and hell, he must have been three miles away. And through this right comes this like wild estimation of how many there must be. So it is frustrating reading this book right now. Grizzlies in the Southwest, and the first part of the book is trying to collate all the cases or someone identified one, but you get into just terminology yep, and being like, is this what is this guy talking about like, what is you know, whoever's keeping records during the Coronado expedition. What is he talking about when he says X, is that what he means? And I don't know. I'll say to your story of the only Grizzly barri kill in Texas, I just read about that, yeah, in the Smithsonian, you know, so I can see that like exceedingly difficult to get a sense of what was where, but you could picture that. I mean, like it's fair to say, like like you take like Nevada, you take Montana was like more of it was sheep country than not. Oh yeah, if you look at if you look at the mountains of Nevada and look how's laid out, and compare that to say Texas. You know, you can see just only the far west part of Texas. And if you look at at where Scott works, Uh, you know, just just some of the heritage the Native Americans have passed down the stories and picture as. We have a pretty good, good good idea where they occurred. Uh again that's interested just representational art. Uh, Like these people are drawing them so familiar with them. Same story of Texas. I can show you pictographs of big horn sheep in Texas that, uh, but but numbers we you know, it's it's it's an educated guest, that's for sure. I think it's a fair assumption to say that we had a lot of sheep and they were their distribution what's why they're they're the use of them culturally and and for materials and food was widespread. People were the first explorers were encountering big encountering big horn bows out waiting to Nebraska and out into the plains, the plains Indians were using bows man a big horn sheep horns, Now, wasn't it most common though, like right out of the park because they they were coming basically being traded for and you know, the the pictograph record is very widespread. So I think it's it's fair assumption to say we had a lot of sheep. They were widely distributed, Um a lot. There was a lot of cultures that were built around sheet um. And obviously I think you've probably read Journal of Trapper. I mean some of his descriptions. This is a guy that's seen Yellowstone Park area and it's sort of in prime form and using descriptions of immense numbers of mountain sheep in the winter time. So like I think someone that uses the word immense numbers, you know, this isn't a herd of or fifteen sheep on the side of a hill. It's the winter range was new rout. There was a lot of sheep there. Have you read Francis Parkman's Oregon Trail? I have not. So he he was a historian and he wrote like at the time, the definitive history of the French and Indian War. But he had health problems. It was told to come out and spend time out in the west, and he comes out and travels on the Oregon Trail. I think this is eighty six. He actually winds up traveling with the Oglala Sioux probably was in the same camp with Crazy Horse when Crazy Horse was thirteen. They go up into the Black Hills to get lodgepole pine for tent lodgepoles. The guys he's album with get onto a big herd of big horns and kill a bunch by throwing rocks down at them. So you get like, that's not too that's like a side. There must be like sizeable groups if that's your hunting strategies. The hurl rocks down and successfully kill a bunch those those kind of accounts that I think we're piecing all that that information to gather cultural accounts, early explorer accounts, we know what their range is in modern day we know how many sheep of the habitat can support, so we can kind of piece it together, you know, like what the numbers look like. So if you if you had to express like how bad it got, what's the best way to express how bad it? God? Because you could is it because you don't know the beginning numbers, So it's hard to do it numerically, Like how do you guys think about it? When you think about restoration? Is it filling in the map or is it achieving numbers? Yeah, it's a little bit of both. If you know, you look in your you're referencing to this map that we've got in our in our conference room, and you know, let's say, if we're using Seaton's numbers of you know, one to two million sheep, let's use a lower numb umber of one million um. You know, throughout North America we reduce those in the nineteen sixties down to twenty five thousand. So in what's now the US all the North North America, US, Canada, Mexico, bign Okay, so not not not because not the thin horns, the thin horn range is actually still distributions still pretty much the same because they haven't come up against like the obstacles. They haven't. Uh and that's and that's that's what you're trying to prevent. But but the big horns did. So you know, you're looking at you know, if it's five hundred or one million, or one point five or two million dollars, we are two million sheep. We reduced those numbers down to twenty five thousand by the late nineteen sixties. Today we're at about eighty five thousand big horn sheep in in Canada, US and Mexico, in all of North America. And at the I want to talk about why it got that way, But at the low a point with sheep, were you then finding that you had states I know we talked about Texas. Were there multiple states that had completely run out? You bet, you bet. You know if you look at you know, some of the data that will show you know, we'll we'll reference remnant population. Some were just gone. Texas gone. Um Nevada was down to a remnant population. They're they're an absolute incredible success store. You know they had they had a hundred or two hundred. You know, what does remnant mean? Two hundred sheep. They're up to eleven thousand desert big ones right now. They probably got about twelve thousand to thirteen thousand big one cheap in Nevada today, and they were down to what's called a remnant remnant one in venties, which would be sub one. So it's pretty amazing. Um, what states are like the big holdouts wym means strong states. Troma did pretty well. Um, I think Montana did pretty well. Hanging all around them pretty well. But still who was who was housing? Uh? What states provided the last refugia for the deserts desert big horns? Like? What states? What had like wound up one of all the smoke clear clay Arizona, New Mexico didn't. No, New Mexico was down. So they were way down pretty much pretty much Mexico and in Arizona, California. You know they I don't remember, hello the numbers got in California. Uh, Nevada's got I mean most of them are remnant. It was rough and Mexico held onto some actually co did um in the Sierra Madre where you know most of it was just well in the Bajaah so yeah, because Baja Man. Like as far as like representational art, yeah, tah North. I've been spent time down there. Man. There's tons of picto grass, big big horns in held here, you know, and they've and they've held their own even today. I mean they've they do pretty well. Um. I mean there are a lot of sheep uh in Sonora alone. I can't remember the numbers exactly, but there are probably in so Norma, Mexico alone, probably just in that state. And then we hunt down I never run into one. Must be the wrong part of the Um. What was the dry like I kind of already know this answer because I know it was like disease and pot hunting, like what made it so bad? Like how did it get so bad? Well, there were there were lots of things, the combination of things, um, civilization, railroads were moving in the blanket term uh and all the wonders that it brings. Yeah, and and Scott can speak to this stuff a little bit further north. And but as far as the stuff in in the south, you know, if you read Texas history, the railroad came through, and you'd read a counch where you know they were feeding railroad workers. Uh. And a guy would hunt meat for the railroads and he would hit the hit hit where our prime habitat is and he would say that had him in a box canyon and I got every one of them. And and so he would take the meat back feed railroad workers. But it was disease issues and a competition for forage and limited water and forage with with domestic livestock that it that had come in later, and and people were trying to feed their families. It was tough places to to make a living. So if you if you break out, let's see you break out market hunting. Um. And who's that famous photographer that used to work out a mile city, Uh Hoffman l A. Hoffman. He was taking pictures in the early eighteen eighties of market hunter camps where they had this all kinds of big horns lined up to their killing along the Yellowstone. But if you're gonna take out, if you're gonna divide it, like, let's say you had habitat issues, Okay, so crazy comp this and water whatever, market hunting and disease are are they teared out or they all just equal players? Oh no, it's if typically, if you if you're trying to piece the story together that's got described, you typically look at land use history and you look at look at how things occurred or what might have occurred. And today the greatest obstacle that we face is disease. And so chances are that was the greatest threat, the thing that caused the most problems in the in the eighteen hundreds, uh, along with those other things. But but in in my view, it would be diseases uh and competition for forage UM and limited water in the desert environment. Anyway, Yeah, that's totally very UM. Just to give you a perspective, like if you think about it, and in terms of grazing and UM, just use the northeast organ exam ample that that corner of Oregon Williwa County where Health Canyon is located, there was about the turn of century there was three hundred thousand sheep grazing in that county. Yes, yep, so there was an immense number of sheep domestic sheep and sorry, the three hundred domestics grazing in Williwa County. So that was a county alone dostic sheep. So we're you know, obviously it was great grazing land for domestic sheep, and so people were grazing. There was no tailor grazing act. It was sort of a free for all in the public land system, which is you know, probably not fully established at that time. Um. And we had a lot of a lot of domestics right in the Big Horn habitat. So we should probably talk about the diza like disease. When we say disease carried them off. Is it a host of diseases that hits Big Horns or is it a disease it hits big Horns. It is a disease complex. So there's clay can fill in the gaps, But there's based on our last decade of research. I mean, it's been an evolving story over time where people are constantly learning new information all the time. Is our techniques and science get better and and our experimentation gets better and our insights get a bit get better. Um. But what all the research points to now is it's one particular bacteria that these are are. North American sheep did not evolve with so they're hosted by the domestic species. When they come in contact with each other, the big horn sheep contract that bacteria. They're no longer able to fight off other infections, so it compromises their sillia in their in their trachea, so they aren't able to move all their bacteria out and they succumb to basically pneumonia but from other whether it's a back you know, but my probably microbial disease, it's the term. So they're very naive to this disease. The the mo it's called microplazma ovi pneumonia, so we call mo BE for short and m O V period ov um and and this this is a disease that seems to have originated in a real sheep in Europe. They perhaps were exposed to it for the correct so they carry it. They're they're not clinically affected by we don't see the same symptoms that we do in big horns or their coffee and or having nasal sinus discharge um. So it doesn't appear to have a strong population level effect or no population level effect and domestic sheep, so some lambs will succumb to it, you know, and you know, once they're kind of getting close to weaning, but our bighorn sheep lambs will be infected early on, and it's it's very fatal. And the strains there's there's many strains, they're all they have different severity and the reactions within big horn population. So it's it's a complicated disease issue. And that's why it's taken us so long to sort this all lout. So was was this disease hitting big horns before anybody knew that this disease? Yeah, it's just as like, I don't know what happened to them all. I mean, if you think about the habitat that these animals live in, how frequently do we how how well studied our hearts now with our with our level of technology and their dedication, But back in the eight hundreds, I know that I don't know how many people were looking at him you look, um, Yeah, you know a great analogy would be looking at what we did to Native American tribes with smallpox. It's you know, it's so similar. Um. And when we talk about micro plasma oa pneumonia as a setup agent, um, you know, kind of in in in lay terms, even though they're not the same. You know, it's it's kind of HIV and sheep uh. You know, HIV is an immune deficiency. This is not This is a bacterium. It's a path a pathogen, but it's a setup agent. So um. You know you Joe was thirty two years old and you heard he died of pneumonia, and you go, my god, you know, Joe is thirty two years old. I was a thirty two year old guy died of pneumonia. Oh well, you know he had AIDS, HIV and compromises immune system and he got pneumonia died very similar to what's happening with sheep is. As Scott had pointed out that the microplasmo pneumonia iMovie lays down the cilia in the esophagus uh and allows other other bugs, other pathogens, other other other bacteria to get down into the lungs. They can't cough it out, the silly is not moving it out. They get sick and then we you know what we used to say, as well, they died of pneumonia. Well, actually they probably died of something else. But imovis. As we're able to study it more and more and more, m O VI was present there's there's a litany of other pathogens uh Mannheimia, hemolytica. There's there's new research that is looking at um nasal tumors. Is. So it's you know, these these sheep, which a mountain sheep. When you look at where they live, uh in some of the harshest climates in North America. Uh some of the most unique climates in North America. The sad thing is is from a from a respiratory standpoint, they're pretty darn weak. Um. Our Vice president of Conservation Kevin Hurley says that I think pretty pretty succinctly says, the damned things are born looking for a place to die. UM. So there, you know, it's it's a it's it's challenging. UM. It is a disease complex. And and every time we we you know, Wild Chief Foundations spent millions and millions of dollars into disease research. We endow a share of wild cheap disease at Washington to Date University. UM. Every rock we overturned that we think we've got the solution, we this is this is it, this is now. Now there's four other rocks underneath it that we un you know, unturned or overturned those and there's four more other questions that we don't know the answer to. So I want to explore the timeline a little bit on on the numbers collapsing. But no one really knew where we started. No one had done like this exhaustive analysis of where sheep exists and how many there were. But it's just like any anyone who's paying attention can't miss the fact that they're vanishing. At what point do people like this organization or other individuals or state agencies, at what point do people go like, wow, we need to get on top of this and start taking some step And at that time did they were they then aware of what was causing the problem? Were people doing restoration? And then all the sheep die again without even knowing that the real issue was disease, thinking it might have been something else. Is that like that question makes sense? It absolute good question. Clay and Scott can remember, you know, we were we were probably putting six sheep into clean sheep, so we were we were making some errors back because we just we just didn't know we were you know, we didn't know that that that sourcerd had mica plasma o pneumonia. Uh, and so we plopped in no doubt in transplants, we prop plopped in six sheep on top of clean sheet. So that became the that became the primary restoration tools. Transplanting sheep absolutely absolutely the early years was protection. Every state nineteen o five, nineteen ten, nineteen o three, every state implemented something. Uh. The first translocation occurred in nineteen twenty two. Uh. Since then there have been probably close to fifteen hundred separate operations removing somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty two thousand animals that have been moved from one place to another. In nineteen o three in Texas, they're like, it's bad enough, you can't kill one. And it wasn't just cheap. Keep that in mind. It was muled here and pronghorn and in all wild life in those days. I mean everything was suffering. But uh, but it was, there's no doubt about it. The tool translocations was that was the tool. Uh. You know, we would go we worked with Nevada Department of Wildlife and we would we would trap sheep on the landscape. I would be on the side of a mountain. We would trap sheep. Uh. We had a trailer, double decker trailer. Feel that trailer full as many as many cheap as they would give us, and then as fast as we could get back into the turkey, give them a handful of turkeys and and uh no, no, uh, give them what whatever it was they wanted, because we were beggars, that was the bottom line were at that time. So so anyway, go back to Texas in twenty four hours later, dumping them on the landscape. Well, we were drawing blood samples, but we would never wait for the results of those samples. Uh So if something would have happened, the cat would have been out out of the back by then. So now now we we sample source and recipient populations in advance, and we look at those kind of things. So we're a lot smarter in the way we do business. That's a horrible thought to think of, just out of out of a very excusable form of ignorance to spend that time and energy. Oh, there's no doubt in fact a clean herd. Yeah, there there's no doubt about it. Because if you look at in the disease itself, it you know that it can only come from a live animal and there's there's no doubt about it. Now that can be domestic cheap, domestic goats, but it can also be bigger horn cheap, and it can also be uh, wild goats. So that that bacteria doesn't do well laying on the dirt. No, it does not, it does. It has to come it comes from a life source. So but we've again how how close, Like let's talk about Trent, let's talk about the transmission for a minute. I don't know what I'm gonna let out of a rabbit hole, but yeah, because because it's not what you understood, I'm just talking like, Okay, you gotta sick. But let's not even bring in domestic you don't have to touch noses. Let's just it's but the pens are too close together. They you know, w s U has a captive herd and they got them. I think one of the early trials they got a little too close to their clean sheet from the six sheets. We're talking inches or feet or yard feet yards, you're talking about in some cases maybe kilometers. Uh. If that's the case, then what do you mean then, like, what do you mean that has to go from sheet to sheep? Because it's just a yeah, well that's that's let's go back to the IF. If you look at the IF, the issues associated with this disease, I mean when when when it comes down to it, oh oh, wildlife they adapt to the various pathogens that they're induced to in some form or fashion. And so how to affects bighorn sheep is you need to have a complete die off. I mean they just do terrible uh. Or you see it where you know, a mother will pass down out of bodies two two lambs, and and at first, you know, when you when you see them the first few weeks of life, they seem to do pretty well. But about eight weeks, eight to twelve weeks, uh, something like that, then then you start seeing issues and then you have complete lamb die off. So so in other words, you have complete die offs, then you have no recruitment for decades. And then the other part of that is that you have some sheep that for whatever reason, they don't die and they go from her to her, from this one to the typhoid mary that so they become a carrier, that is a carrier that sheds that disease to other population. And so bighorn sheep move, they move, and the other thing is there. They are long lived species generally in absence of disease. You know, you just can live close to twenty years and rams are you know, kind of the ten to twelve is a long long live ram. So some of these particular carriers can be alive for a long time, moving around and keeping that disease in the herd, and it's not able to fade out. How much do you guys see? Uh, how much have you seen big horns move? Like, don't give me the no. I'm always interested in the crazy number, but the number the normal and then and then it hit me with a crazy number. Okay. So the the number that we're using based on sort of this estimation from telemetry data that was sort of a published a model that we use for sort of risk of contact modeling. So how likely our big horn sheep gonna go out and landscape and contact a particular distance from their home range? Right, So all animals set up a home range. Generally, big horn sheep do exploratory movements where they leave their home range and then may return. So whether it's to see what's going on on the next ridge or to look for receptive use, but generally the number there is thirty five kilometers. So basically of RAM movements over a fourteen year data set showed that almost those movements were within thirty five kilometers from their home range. How big this core zone? If that varies. It could be, it could be larger, could be it could be tight habitat and particular individual So some individuals may have small home ranges, some might have larger. So the crazy number is a little ram that came out of the lost in Herd just this past couple of years and near Joseph, Oregon or Enterprise and Joseph up in the Allowa Range. So he took a little walk and he went on a loop, so they were they collared him. He showed up, i think on somebody's deck and it was just take and he took a good photo and they recognized send him the Hell's Canyon Initiative folks, and they recognize him as twelve l O seven. Hey, that's so we ear tagged him as a lamp. So they knew that they had a definitive age on him. And he went across the Snake River, the Salmon River and then over into the Clearwater drainage in Idaho and then put a collar on him at some point and actually put three collars on them because they kept failing. So he got caught two or three times with the helicopter, and I think he got darted once. So and he made a three and seventy eight mile loop through seven different home ranges of big Horns, and he was out in some weak fields and crossed a bunch of highways. And so he went a hundred twenty five miles from his home range and covered in that year and a half time or so with the collar, he covered three seventy eight miles and then died on a remote point in Hell's Canyon, natural causes for presumably that it it was during thing was during the winter, so they couldn't get in there with any other website the jet boat. So I don't remember how long it was when the collar went on mortality until they wentn't recovered it, so he just went on a crew. Yeah, So I mean it kind of just demonstrates the behavior potential of these animals that some of them are going to move and they show up in town. You know, when when you're when you have a civilization at the bottom of a nice canyon that joins up to another big canyon they're going to come through, And it happens pretty regularly, especially in that in that landscape of health. Ganyon lower heuse Ganyon. Yeah, so this brings up like that brings up a big question. So how we have really set up like what needs to happen here? If we know what needs to happen. But if they're gonna go do that, how do you ever protect them from picking up transmittable diseases and spread them to everybody else? That's a million dollar question. Well, when Steve, the protocol of many Western states is when a bighorn sheep comes in contact with domestic sheep, that bighorn sheep is shot. So that's that's a standing acting protocol because the fear is that that big horn could then be the you know, the vector and as as you know this this damn ram did I mean goes on a walk about and and could have gone through a whole bunch of hers, So you know, kind of the standard protocol, it would be the administrative. Yeah, you would kill like a state age she would kill. That would and they're trying, they're trying to get away from that where possible, so that just the setup I was talking about where some animals will show up and say that, you know a town along the Snake River where there's big horn habitat on all sides, and they show up in town, and you know, generally the the old method was let's just let's remove this animal so it can't go back, and and they're removing it for the express purpose to protect that this could have It could have picked up pneumonia, it could have contact, especially if it was seen obvious ones that are document in a pasture with domestic sheep, domestic goats you know most of the time, or but what they're trying to do now is based on the proximity to w s US that we try to put you know, dark the animal live, capture it, then holding test or else, take it to the w s A w s U facility and then becomes to research animal. Basically, I'd like to this. This was like my big AHA moment when I came here, right I was sitting with our biologists across the hall and and he just kind of said it like it was just something that that just happens. And I'm like, so you're telling me I could go get a grazing permit for my domestic sheep going to public land and then that wild cheap comes down and boom they shoot it and it does you know. So we see in the breaks um a couple of years ago there was two young rams. They went within three quarters of a mile of a domestic sheepherden. Boom they were shot. But yep, yep because of them being a vector. So what's like, what's your do you guys have a official stance on the practice? Because there an alternative to that, I mean, just to that part of it right there. Now. We we we you know, our are our objective is to keep the two species separate. So um, if there's non contact, you know, if you can send them off to w s U or send them off to sabille In in Wyoming, great um. But you know you think about that, that's also a death sense. You know, they're going to now be a guinea pig for disease testing. Um. So that you know that there's really not much we can do other than keep the two separated. So you know, we circle back to Washington, d C. You know, that's what we're advocating for back in Washington, d c IS is federal land managers and agencies to to work for spatial and temporal separation of of wild sheep and domestic sheep. What does that need to look like? I can I can imagine where it becomes contentious. Could you mind like sketching out the obvious and how does that become a contentious conversation? Well? You you know, you got I was. I was just back there with a with a producer who's who's this is domestic sheep producer. He's the largest public land domestic sheep producer in uh in Montana. He's a good guy, uh and he gets it and he uh he does his best to keep his domestic sheep away from wild sheep um and he wants more wild sheep on on Montana's mountains. But you know, the the issue there's um litigation. Uh. Whild she Foundations really not a litigant type organization. We we we feel we'd rather sit around the table and and and workout solutions. So you know, our our objective there, Steve, would be to sit down with that producer and go all right, Uh. You know the Western way of doing things is having a whiskey chatting ig olloging that there's an issue first and foremost and then looking for solutions. Is it is at times of year when when a producer's trailing through an area, UH is it is it how he uses or she uses the the upper allotments or you know these high mountain allotments. So UM, we've we've done various programs in various states. There's a few states that have very good collaboratives where you have a wild sheep and domestic sheep UH interaction working group. UH. We don't always agree, but we sit around a table once or twice a year and say, let's, you know, let's come up with solutions that we can UH, we can, we can work this out. Doesn't work everywhere. UM. You know wild sheep foundations of official position as we want healthy and UH expanding wild sheep herds UM, but we also support a vibrant domestic sheep industry. The key is there's often places that just absolutely incompatible in the same landscape. UM. We have worked with um permitees to convert if it's a high conflict area, you've got a large population of big horn sheep, large population of domestic sheep, and we know there's going to be contact. We've worked with some producers to convert them to cattle were appropriate. Uh. There have been situations where we've worked with producers to pay them almost like a CRP program in the Midwest, but pay them to retire their allotment or vacate their lot, just to look at like, what would you make in profits running sheep? Can we take conservation dollars and we'll pay you to not do it? We take private conservation dollars to pay it and not do it. We just have you have a willing seller, willing absolutely and we you know, we we paid a just because we're these These deals are typically confidential, so I won't even mention the state, but we we pay to produce or four seven thousand dollars to vacate uh their allotment. Um. They were also in getting into trouble with grizzly bears and wolves. Uh constant constant problem. So uh the expansion of grizzly bears and expansion of of of wolves has in some ways benefited big horn sheep in some states because the primitives want to get get the hell out of there, and they come to NGOs like Wild Chief Foundation and say can you give us a hand, and we do, and we do, and we've spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars doing that, and you nailed it on a willing seller, willing buyer deal. But what does it look like? You're talking about big organized producers okay, who presumably have kind of like a business sensibility, they have a sense of profit loss. But what about all the people that just have two or three sheep? Excellent? How do you even know who they are? Excellent question, because I mean I could go like my brother, he has lived and he doesn't formally big Orange country. He's got some sheep, He's got ten acres that irrigated pasture, he's got sheep out there. There's nothing to prevent him from having a buddy come over and say, hey man, I'd love to have a lamp for my place. Nothing. There's no paperwork. So the key, the key key there is education, you know. So I mean on this on this podcast, I mean we're we're gonna be educating people that there's an issue. Um you know, Uh, I came from Texas and I go down to to Houston and I gave a presentation, I talked, I talked about the disease issue into a hunting community that you would presume would would know something about it, and it's kind of blank stairs. I've never heard of it, um, truth be told. I came to the Wild Chief Foundation for Dallas of Fark Club, I wasn't aware of it. I've been in the Huntington conservation industry for eighteen years. I hadn't heard about it. So it's it's it's education. Um. While she foundation obviously respects private landowners, um you know, respects private land rights, uh and your ability to do what you you want on your land. But um, you know, our our our effort there would be to educate those private landowners or those recreational producers or hobby flocks or whatever you want. Four h um f a a lot of four h animals out there that could get in trouble. Educate them. UM. I just I just spent two years, two days on the Missouri River with a UM private producer in southern BC who gets it, um. And interesting enough, he's got a small flock of domestic cheap they're actually mouflan sheep, and he's in proximity to Big Horn habitat and he's a part of an Internet interaction working group in Southern BC, and he was the guy that asked the question of them. He goes, well, why don't I, as a producer, test my sheep for amovie? He did, and he's got a nemovie free flock and he's now one of our biggest advocates as a domestic sheep producer for amovie free flock. So that would be potentially one of the solutions. And that's pretty interesting to think about because I mean, you know, a lot of states have managed to get brucellosis out of livestock hurts. Is that an area of interest to think that you could expand absolutely well, they would, you know, they would be amovie free sheep. There's a doctor Tom Besser who's our Rocky Crate Endowed Charities at Washington State University, probably one of the world's foremost experts on this issue, and he's advised us that if you have an iMovie free domestic flock, that's about a nineties seven percent solution to this issue. So that that is exciting. UM, But there's a fly in the ointment Scott. Scott just talked about that ram that did a three hundred some odd mile walk about. So we've got you know, we we know that um iMovie is not endemic to bighorn sheep, but in iMovie is now resident in bighorn sheep. So we have herds and you know we're in Montana, so we have herds in Montana that they test positive for iMovie UM. As Scott pointed out, there's a variety of strains. It's kind of like the you know, not necessarily but again Layman's terms, kind of like the flu or the cold. You know, sometimes you get one hell of a common cold. Sometimes you get a little light one. Sometimes you get a flue. You know, there's a flu virus that you know that just wipes you out. Other times it's not so bad. The same thing with you know, strains of iMovie. Uh, this this big horn may be able to live with it. Well, now here's the fly in the ointment. What if we have a private land domestic sheep producer doing the right thing to tons of money testing his or her sheep. They're a movie free they make sure they only bring in stock from amovie free. And we got a wandering bighorn that's a movie positive. Now we've now we've switched the dynamic there, and you know that the fact is we've got to be intellectually honest and go We're still back into a separation scenario now, we're trying to separate you know, these iMovie free clean domestic sheep from a potentially UM infected wild sheep. The truth of the matter, if we were gonna have to think different, we we can't continue to do the way we've done in the past. And I think there are opportunities that we missed UM and I want to emphasize the work that was done. Great Gray mentioned private landowners earlier. We restored bighorn sheep in Texas with private landowners because you didn't have a choice there. Absolutely absolutely so we figured out a way to do this together. And these are these are people who care and and our goal is certainly not to put people out of business. Uh. To me, the way we do this is we figure out new solutions, better way of doing business. We sit out at the same table. We don't play the politics. We we we stopped denying that the disease exists. It's it's real. You asked me a question, or ask us all a question earlier. Didn't you have any ideas you what's those numbers decline? Everybody had a thought, they had a pretty good idea why it just never was demonstrated or proven. And and later on that information came in a controlled experiment and where we where we knew that it that it did occur. And then the question it became, well, that didn't really occur in the wild. Uh, you guys did that in a controlled setting? It really doesn't occur in the wild. It does. So the first the first thing we have to do is acknowledge that we've got a problem, and then we start working together. And Grace says it best. He talks about, you know, it's okay to have both on the landscape, they just can't be there at the same time, at the same place. And so we have to figure out what that what that does look like. Uh, but we are going to have to think outside the box. How you know, how do how do we do things? Is it? I know? And and and probably will suck the air out of this room. But we allow private landowners in Texas to benefit from sheep tags. There's an incentive there for landowners to work with us, and it's work extremely well. Um landowners are willing to do whatever it takes, we conduct we uh. Landowners allow public hunters on their property to hunt. UH, we hunt each other's property. We we do research, We capture sheep on private land. So there are lots of other examples. That's just like in that mob, you're going for a thing where you're trying to change the landowner perception of what it means to have sheep. It's not just like you're screwed now, a buddy, there's a sheep on your property, exactly, and you'll never as a private landowner or a producer. Why would I care if there were sheep bigger and cheap around here? If I saw no benefit from that? And so I think there are opportunities that we haven't explored that we need to. We need to sit down on the at the same table work through some of these issues. But but we can't do that if we don't acknowledge that the disease exists, and if if every time something major happens or an obstacle comes up a stumbling block, we run straight to d C. Are there are there pneumonia deniers? Oh? Absolutely, It seems to be a common theme across the handful of CD deniers. Absolutely, well, there's deniers and then there's users of you know, we've seen it uses a leveraging tool when they know that we'll pay to play. Hey, you know, hey, we're gonna bring in some domestics in here. What do you think of that? Or you know there's a guy in in gardener somewhere. Um, he got pissed he lost his grazing allotments and said all right and brought in domestic sheep when we lost forty three sheep that winter, because he was like, well, we had a we had a guy down in Wyoming that he was basically a cattle producer, but he had he had cattle a lotments up to eleven thousand feet in the mountains and the in prime prime Big Horn habitat, and he had he was, you know, not not the not the best grazer in the world. And he'd gotten in trouble with the BLM constantly and he lost his BLM cattle allotments. He goes, fine, I'm gonna put domestic sheep on my deeded land up at eleven thousand feet right in Big Horn habitat. Now, what are you gonna do? So so then he just doing just retribution. That's wildlife terrorism. Yeah, that's wildlife terrorism because you know he knows you know. So as as Garrett said, you know you've got you've got people, you've got deniers, and then you've got those that will use me as a weapon. Well, and that that also occurs on just the different public lands issues. Uh. There there are some who would use use the grazing part of it is as or the anti grazing part of it. Uh, bring big horns into that, just just to lay that on the table. In other words, Uh, it's all about where it might be about public land grazing. That's not what we're about either, has nothing to do with that. I don't follow what you're saying. Well, one of the one of the public land guys can say it. Say it better there we have U. There are some groups who would use big horns cheap to say that we don't want any grazing on public land, so let's use big horn cheap to accomplish this. So someone who had an agenda where they felt like they weren't so much pro big horn as they were antirasing on public lands, and they'd be like this would be a great place for some big horns, and I know that I can, I'll be able to manipulate that in the achieving my other goal. And that's not that's not our mission. Our mission is is simple. We put and keep sheep on the mountain. And and if we're gonna do this, we're gonna have to do it together with livestock producers. And I think there are some really good examples out there for people working together. Uh well, I think that the key, Like you know, I've met with and have spoken with a lot of very effective players in the conservation space, people like the people in this room, in this organization, who have a long track record. And the thing that I find that these groups are in is you're in the middle, and you got some crazies off to each side, and you're trying to guide right, You're trying to keep this thing moving along with some pretty radical fringe elements probably barking at you from both sides. Absolutely, you know, and then I think, you know, going back too, he just keeps preaching education and it's huge, huge, you know, I've worked with, spoke to your buddy Ryan Callahan a lot, like you talk to these companies who one of their biggest things is wool, you know, and they're always preaching that they're selling great wool products, but where do you get it? You know, you have some people that are they do and so they're safe, right, same with Sika, they're saying, you know, so talking with Sia in first life, I mean like, hey guys, you guys want to talk about where you get your wool from? Where? Maybe where you shouldn't. You have some groups that say we're environmentally friendly, you know, because we source our wool here locally and there's not these shipping things and all that, and then you go where do you get in? They go Colorado. You go, oh, so you're just killing you know. I sat next to Van Snard up on stage talking about how, yeah, if you're sourcing your wool west of the Mississippi, you're probably contributing to the die off of big horn cheap. And that got an interesting, I mean bold statement. Man. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, and but a statement that people could read into pretty heavily. Yeah it will, and you know, I I should probably should have followed it up more. But people just don't understand. And a lot of times these people building the garments and understand talking, you know, Ryan Callahan is a very educated dude when it comes to conservation and a lot of these things he did had no idea about. So so if we talk about if we look at this like the separation thing, the separation idea, Um, well, well first I'm gonna dress something you just brought up. Is there do you guys have a is there like, is there a the equivalent of like labeling something organic or labeling uh an organization to be of a certain pedigree of four oh one k nonprofit? Like? Is there do you guys have a way where you like are certifying or giving a stamp of approval to certain producers for practicing. No, we we looked into it. Yeah, we had a we had a um, you know, kind of a Wild Sheep Safe campaign and it it's the challenge with that, Steve is it did get into a certification process and we didn't have the staff um and and you know then we we talked to our attorneys and they went, oh, man, you certify one and not you know, so yeah, we kind of backed away from that on the Wild Sheep Safe and and it's and it's it's almost like Scott had said on you know, what is effective separation. What is the distance. It's a real it's a real challenge there. It's like an impuge. It sound there's a thing. There's like a type of building. It's like what they call it salmon safe or salmon country or something in a building can in a building can comply in a certain way and has to do with the quality the runoff. That has to do with it. You've achieved some threshold, some measurable threshold of of acknowledgement that this water is going to be king that and this is this is what Garrett touched on. And so we're we're kind of, you know, we're kind of looking at a concept of conflict free lamb and wool um and we're still flushing that out. I mean, there's responsible wool standards that the wool industry uses. Interesting enough, I've read through most of the organizations that have responsible woolf standards. It's more animal husbandry. It's um. You know, it's transportation, it's predator control, whether or not there's some predator control going on in your area. They may think that's non friendly about wildlife. Nothing in there talks about big horn sheets. So it's more animal rights. Bet so we're you know, we're reaching out to some of those more environmental groups to say, hey, if you're if you're gonna, if you're gonna run down this path, you better put big horns in the picture. But as we as we mature, you know, this conflicts free space, um, it too is more of an education program. I mean, world, we will probably never be able to have completely conflict free scenarios in the Western United States unless you put the wool industry and this lamb industry out of business. And that's not our objective. I mean, that's just not our objective. So the key about that question me ask this, does does the woolen lamb industry in the West absolutely rely on public land grazing? Okay, families and the big horns probably rely on private land. Uh no, more big horns are on public land even in the wintertime. Um yeah still yeah, still um so yeah, it's it's a it's sevent of the time they're spending on public lands. So so there is a you know, there is a public land grazing scenario, and and it just it just varies on states on ten it's not it's not really the issue public land grazings out the issue. It's more education of private recreational herds or you know, our producers. UM. Colorado is probably the ground zero for the public land grazing issue with a lot of conflict zones. The BLM and the Fourth Service have risk of contact maps. UM. You can look at a map and it'll show active domestic sheep grazing allotments UM, occupied big horn range UM, and active BLM allotments and then red conflict zones, so they're mapped out. I mean, we you know, there's there's risk of contact analysis. That's that's going on. The bottom line is we pretty much know where the touch points and the hot points are. UM. You know, one of the solutions that we're looking at is what if we what if we took the top ten hot points and to take pick a state, Colorado, what if we took the top ten hot points that man, we've got you know, real critical core bighorn herds in there in that area, and we've got some pretty significant conflict zones. What if we address those first? You know, it's it's eating the elephant one bite at a time. It's it's a huge issue. It's a huge problem. UM. You know, the disease issue is complex. We you know, we don't have all the answers, but what if we could you know, incrementally, um, you know, ten percent at a time start addressing those issues with a variety of tools. Some of them are going to be bottom line moving a producer out of that area. And but the key there is can we find that producer or other grass de grace? Um? You know, are there private land areas? Are there? Are there? You know, are there tools that we haven't used yet? You know, can can the the wild sheep advocacy community? Um, you know, if we're not going to buy you out, can we incentivize you to go onto some lower elevation pivot point, you know, some alpha the field or some other grass field that you can utilize instead of high mountains summertime allotments where big horn sheep are grazing. So, you know, we just gotta we gotta get clever and and Clay said it, and we we've got we've got a program that we call our new narrative. But you know, the premises we've been doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different results. Time to change that. You know, we all know that's called insanity if you expect a different results. So we're we're, you know, we're we want to sit down with with willing producers who are progressive and get it and don't deny that there's an issue, and said, I'm saying, hey, you know, you wanna you wanna keep your family in business, and it's a part of the western landscape. We respect that, you know, as a multiple use advocacy organization, which is what wild She Foundation is, we respect that. But let's let's not do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. Let's let's do different things and get different results. And something Grace says a lot to you. You know, there's those that sue and those that do um. And we're kind of like that first group that knocks on the door, and when we get denied, then we go alright, well, when they knock on the door, it's probably not gonna be as pretty, you know. So we're kind of like that just right at the beginning, saying hey, let's let's work things out. And then when we leave if we get denied, you know, and there's there's unfortunate reality that other groups just come in and let me assume them. Yeah, you have a comment. It kind of got a little bit lost in there, but it's I'll just chime in with the tribe's perspective on some of this. And it's really tied to public land grazing. And so the tribes I work for have a treaty reserve right to harvest big horn sheep, and that's a deal. It's the trust responsibility. But the federal government and they are at this time permitting, through a federal action, um the grazing of domestic sheep that adds knowingly adds risk to our populations of sheep big horns. So they we just basically can't accept that because we really can't quantify the risk, so we can want to find a minimum risk. But I want you to say that a a little more clearly. You're you're saying the tribe has a deal with the federal government that they can hunt big horns, but it's reserved in their treaty of eighteen and they're and they're able to argue that the federal government, by giving the grazing allotments to domestic sheep, is hindering their treaty right. If we are, if we are knowingly adding risk to the population viability. And I think we can demonstrate that with the science. It's like coming through a back door to grazing. Grazing domestic sheep on you know, suitable and prime big horn habitat is very problematic for us in that in that that that's just the nature of it. And I mean, yes, we we are, you know, not against public land grazing, but we just need to take a make a hard take a hard look at where it we're suitable to grades domestic sheep and where's not. And we need to protect the sheep we have, but we have to look at how are we going to expand our sheep populations If we have allotments that are stocked with domestic sheep in historic and prime big horn habitat, that could would be suitable. Otherwise we've got to think about that. So do you does does you're or when you're working for the tribe as a biologist, do you wind up interfacing with these guys a wild cheap foundation? Are you in communication? Yeah? What are the conversations that you guys have private? No, it's it's always a good it's always a great discussion because this is a it's a tough it's a tough, tough question. You know, you guys are coming at it from the same side of the thing, or you want what's best for big horns. We do. That's and that's the we just have it. The tribe has a very different worldview of that. You know, I understand that was something that was taken away and it's still a cultural memory. It's there. They want to be fully fully be able to fully exercise that and a couple of tags is is not sufficient. We do coordinate with the States for for on issuing big horn sheep tags, and so that's a little bit of a sore point. So we really need to figure out how we can move the needle and and and get sheep back where they belong. Yes, so how does that work when they're on Indian reservation land? Then they're technically owned by well, we don't have big horn sheep on the reservation who have a relatively small reservation um, but you have hunting rights offside the reservation and about four different herds of sheep. And so we work with the states and and figure out a tag allocation, a lotment, and we issue we hold a drawing just kind of similar to the state drawing and they'd like to see more big horn tags, which means they need more to see more big horns. Yeah, are you guys? Uh? I know you can't really answer this, but it's gonna throw it out there anyway. Optimistic or pessimistic about big horns. I mean a lot of like good work has been done, right man, I mean we were down to we're up to what what's a livable number for you? You know? That's that is. The tough one is is where do we want to go? Um? And I guess the best way for us to express that is we would like to see bighorn sheep everywhere they are now suitable. The problem is, Steve Um, you know, suitable what does that mean? Where they're safe? Um, It's tough to find places to translocate bighorn sheep that they're not going to get into trouble, trouble being just this trouble, the trouble trouble running into a domestic domestic That is that really that is number one in hitting factor on restoration of big horn sheep is is contact with the stick cheap and goats. So fair to say, like if it wasn't for the disease, not blame, blame whoever. But if if the disease for whatever reason didn't exist, is it fair to say that we might have a million big horns or five thousand big horns in the country. Well, we certainly have more than eighty five thousand, and you'd probably easily say, probably double that and maybe triple that. I mean, we've we've quite you know, we've we've had a threefold increase since the late sixties seventies, and I think we could have another threefold increase. But right now, there's it's tough to find. Um is is Scott's saying, you know, thirty five kilometers. I mean, we're sitting in my office and there's a Montana unlimited big horn ram that I saw in winter Range, and I took him thirty miles away. So that's thought thirty kilometers. That's thirty miles away. You got unlimited cheap, I did. That's an unlimited cheap It's a big unlimited cheap and it's a thirteen and a half year old unlimited sheep. Like to kill me. Oh man, you found you you found that same ram. Thirty we found that same ram. You know, a blind hog can find an acorn every once in a while. That's a big, unbelievable Yeah. That that's the exact on my on the front of my door. I have the live picture of that ram I had. I had a photograph in in winter range of that ram on my desktop on my MacBook for nine months. And we found three rams in a different unit and one of them was that guy. One of them was bigger. That's nice thing about sheep as you can really eat because they don't lose, right, they got a horn and they don't lose it. You got you three chunks of character. Now, you know I need to I need to preface in in case you know your audience thinks I'm a great cheap hunter. I had a great sheep hunter with me. I actually had Kevin Hurley are our conservation director now our vice president conservation. He was our He was kind of our camp Jack and I had the as and ahole. Jack Essington Jr. Who I think has sheep blood running through his veins, was with me. So he and I, he and I backpacked up in and we found the ram in Montana. You've got to get out of there in forty eight hours. You've got to present a a full head and cape within forty eight hours to game and fish or fish won parks and we got we got to the biologists and forty eight after a bivouack and a lot of hoping, just just all the things you love. Huh, that's pretty cool. But the point I realized, the point you were making is just the distance is covered. Yeah, that ram, that ram covered thirty miles and that was just standard for that ram, and he didn't do it by going into straight line. Now, the good news is in in that unlimited area, there's there's no more domestic sheet. Yeah. So I mean you know that that and and the that was in the Still Waters Unit five hundred and those sheep are relative lee clean um and and relatively hardy, but they still have some resident pathogens in them, but they're they're they're living with it. The problem is you then bring domestic sheep back in there, and they bring in another strain of of OVI and that's that's the that's the ticker, that's the straw that broke the camel's back, and then you then you get a die off again. So let me hear with this question. Now that we've kind of like prodded around what the future might look like and what's acceptable? Um do we now? Do we right now know that at least it won't get worse? I don't you know? There there are some and I didn't answer your first question. I am going to yea, because there's there's you know, there's there's those within our community to think that status quo is success. Um. While she Foundation, at least from my perspective, is not gonna up status quo as success. Um. We want to come up with some more unique solutions to this problem. And they're they're out there. Um that while I was in Washington, d C. I had had a beer with that domestic sheep producer and in Nevada they took a little different tact. There were a bit basically willing to accept more risk. Some states would be willing to do that, others would not. Scott, I don't think that. So. So here here's a scenario. Are are we willing um? If there if we can, if we can work more on the movie free, Um, if we can work with producers on better practices, is our community willing to let's say, in Montana, UM, put wild you know, translocate wild sheep into areas that typically we would not because we're fearful of that that the disease transmission. And that's a big question we're facing right now. So there's to spend the money on it. Are we willing to spend the money? Are we willing to to not litigate with a producer because that producer didn't object to us moving wild sheep within arguments operation? You're making it, you're making a sort of treat We're just we're yeah, We're we're you know, this is it's it's a it's a it's an organization wide question, it's a community wide question. And there's those that agree with it, those that disagree with it. But would we then set up protocols that you know, we know that if that big horn goes on a walk about, that big horn is not going to make it. Or do we use do we use unlimited areas as a way to separate big horns from domestic sheep? Are there are there areas and you know, this is again a kind of a Montana unique scenario. Can we use almost no go zones for for bighorn sheep? If a bighorn sheep is in that zone, it's unlimited you can take it. You know, we're we're just trying to think out of the box. Try to try to think out of the box again. Let's get let's get get past this doing the same thing and just fighting over this. The good news And I guess why I'm I'm um optimistic and um realistic, but optimistic is um we are learning more and more and more on the disease issue. If we can get the domestic sheep industry to spend as much money as we do on disease research, that will help their industry. Because there's some there's some the data that show that you know, a movie is not good for domestic sheep either. Uh, it's it's endemic to him and it's resident to him. But it's not it's it's you know, the best or did one study I think that he was he was looking at the live weight and it was like a seven percent increase and then it change so you know, probably shouldn't use those numbers, but there was a kind of a significant weight gain, uh change between in a movie free domestic sheep and a movie positive domestic sheep. The movie free gained weight quicker. Well, then there's a market incentive, so maybe maybe there's some you know, something that we can learn there. We're not there yet. It's it's it's unproven, it's not published, it's not peer reviewed. Um, but maybe there's something there. But you know, wouldn't that be cool if we can use market incentives, uh to encourage domestic sheep producers to uh you know, if they can um have a movie free sheep, you know, like like pretty much eliminating small smallpox. Maybe there is some sort of silver bullet where we can vaccinate domestic sheep and they're all a movie free. You know. We've got two bright guys in the rooms, Scott and Clay. You know, I'm just I'm just a management guy and a marketing guy. But um, you know, there's some very people out there that are working on this issue. We've got the wildlife that community working on it. Um. There's not consensus on on what the solution is. But you know what, we haven't cured the common cold yet either, but at some point we might. But you have an interesting point there about producers being incentivized to get ahead of the problem. And ye, honestly, I had an interesting conversation one time with Wyoming's current governor Matt Mead. We're just talking about we're talking about sage grouse in the extraction industry, and he's saying, the many players in the extraction industry have a very long view and they're very sophisticated, and they know that like for them to be on the ground doing good business, they need to head off problems. And a problem that they have a vested interest in heading off is not letting wildlife get into dire situations where you're gonna then invite high level scrutiny into practices, and that what's good for them to operate in their area would be good sage grouse numbers, and that they can at times be very effective players when they have that long view and not heading into conflict, heading into disaster, courting litigation. But you just have But again, you have to be in it for the You have to be looking to the future to ten years profit, not tomorrow's profit. Right. It's a really good point. I'm optimistic. We've made a lot of progress and in wildlife disease and you know, disease in our domestic life stock. If you think some of the things we've gotten out of our domestic animals over the you know, centuries that we've been doing it. I'm I'm optimistically we can. If we put the shoulder this one, I think I think we can overcome it. I hope, I'm really hopeful. I think the fact that you're you know, honestly, Steve, you're here, like that's the reason to be optimistic, because this was something that wasn't really talked about a whole lot. You know, when you get these these guys that haven't incredible influence on the community, you know, and and understanding really what we're up again, inst you know, imagine this issue flipped onto the elk population, a totally different story and why because you know, North American model is a huge success largely because of opportunity to hunt, you know, relatively low opportunity to hunt wild cheap, relatively low funding for conservation. That's where we come in. If it was elk on the same landscape, man, this wouldn't even be a discussion. Could you imagine if twenty bull elk came down into a domestic sheepherd and they mowed down those twenty bull elk just because they came in contact with him, No way, no way, And so the almost what makes them so aspirational, like you know, you know, it's so difficult to get a tag, it's so difficult to get to their habitat. The things that make them so aspirational can also impede them on making them relatable to our everyday lives and understanding what's going on. If we see a die off of fourteen thousand feet, we don't really take heed to it and it's not something that impacts our freezer. We don't think it does. But we talked about wild Cheap being one point five million, you know, almost double what elk are. Did they imagine if they were imagine if it was something that you just, you know, you went down to Bob Wards and bought yourself a tag, and when when sheep hunting, like they a lot more advocates. That's an interesting point that Callahan brought up after being at the sheep Show because he was like, he's kind of marveling at the amount of people that are spending so much time, so much money, so much energy getting behind sheep conservation, and he's like the thing of it is, most of those guys are never gonna draw a sheep tag. They're just doing it because for the idea you know something. They do a lot of these, a lot of the chapters that they do. It's pretty fun. You know, you sit down at the banquet and they say, all right, stand up if you've taken a sheet, and it's like maybe a fifth of the room. But people are gonna spend thousands of dollars every night because they just believe in it. It's just out of their grasp. They believe in it enough. You know. It's just this aspirational thing that we almost can't can't imagine going after. I would say that we have the most altruistic UM membership in our community. I mean, we've got seventy two hundred members. Steve last year we put four point six million dollars into Wild Sheep concerts four point six million, eighteen point one million in the last four years with a little small sixty eight to seventy two hundred member organization. UM Clay worked on a project UM a couple of years ago and we were we were looking at it and it's kind of switching gears a little bit, but it looks at the auction tags UM and those are a little controversial. We spent tons of time giving both sides of that those are a little both sides of that argument with Crystal clar Look, let me, let me, let me give you, let me give you some facts when it comes to wild Sheep concert, please please seventy four per Can I first explain what you're talking about? All right, We've talked about a thousand times. People always ask us about this, But um, when you have I'm speaking for the listeners right now, when you have a resource that isn't large enough to meet the demand on the resource, you have to find a way. And I'm talking about a wild game resource. You have to find a way to allocate opportunity, right. And so if you live in the great state of Michigan and Wisconsin and you want to go deer hunting, there's enough deer to go around. Everybody goes down, you buy a deer tag, everybody gets to go with a lot of wildlife species. There's just the numbers aren't there, And so everyone throws their name in the hat and it's meant you know that, shouldn't they meant to be? But traditionally those opportunities are allocated democratically. An exception to that case would be what you're gonna now explain, Um, which would be when they take tags, usually for very coveted species or coveted hunting areas, and they take tags and sell them to the highest bit or. And here's the rub. Here's the thing you got paid attention to. And it's usually structured and subtle such a way that like nine of the money goes into the ground for restoration work, so it's not lying in someone's pocket. And this is tightly this is carefully watched. This is a carefully watched flow of money. So at that's that's a that's a great it's a great setup. And and if if I could expand on it, you know, I um Shae Mahoney is a great friend, and he and I give talks around you know the world, and he was listening to some of my talks on this this tag thing that we're going to talk about. The special permits attacks you know where exactly what you said, where you know, one or two or five um special licenses are taken from the pool of available tags and sold to the high bidder. And I used to call that a bad stardization of the North American conservation models used to I support it. I never went that far, but I called it a bastardization. And I've I had Shane Shane Mahoney down in my drift boat. We're floating down the Yellowstone River and and we're you know, probably enjoying a beer in Shane's case againness and he was just having a good time. He goes, great, I want to I want to can you say it the way you can use his accent I'm trying to get I'm trying to get the voice of God, Mr Shane Mahoney, Great, absolute fabulous conservation. But you know, he says, you know, Grey, you know, I've I've listened to say this a number of times in a number of places that you know this this this special permit and tag. And it could also be a raffle tag and we'll get into that. But the special permit and tag is a bastardization of the North American model. He's saying to you, I've heard you've heard me say this, and I talk I you, you know, and I even use capitalism socialism kind of our our our standard system is an egalitarian pro grahmmed is and you know, Steve, as you put it, I mean, anyone can go down and get attack um when it comes to some of the coveted ones where it's a whether it's a big horn sheep or a stone sheep, or a desert sheep, or or a rocky mountain help in a particular unit in Utah, um you can auction off those tags. Two. So now that's that's not egalitariance of color. And I apply for a bighorn sheep tag every year in six or seven states, good for you, and in this state in particular, for thirteen or fifteen or sixteen years in a row, and I haven't gotten one. Just to give a sense of like what we're talking about, we're talking about the slim pickings. You got slim pickings on tag. You've got guys in Montana that have applied for thirty five years and have not drawn attacks. So you know, you're either lucky um or you go into a jurisdiction like Montana that has the unlimited units. But you know, we had a three three to four per cent suc sex. But so so we're on the river and Shane goes, you know, Grey, and he is you know, he and Valor's guys, so the probably the foremost authority on the North American model. He says, you're actually wrong. It's not a bastardization of the North American model. The North North American model also is one of its seven pillars gives the state the opportunity to decide how it funds wildlife conservation in that state. And so a state that decides, like Montana, that we will take out of the pool of big worn sheep, permits one auction tag and one raffle tag. And the key there is one goes to the you know, the high bidder and the very affluent one out of a couple of hundreds. But yeah, yeah, I think we have a hundred fifty tags or so, so you know, one goes as a as an auction tag, and one also is a raffle tag that you know, so us regular folks can you know, buy a raffle ticket and potentially have a little better odds than you know than the you know, you've been in for thirteen fourteen and some people thirty five years. So here's the interesting thing when it comes to wild sheep and and Clay a lead this study with a with an intern seventy four percent and I'll say that again, seventy four percent of WAFFWA Western Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies the Western agencies in United States and Canada UH seventy four percent of their wild sheep conservation agency dollars comes from either an auction or a raffle tag seventy percent. Now, so we will your peeling like let's say two tags out of a hundred plus tags and those two provide seventy four percent. In a state like Arizona, it's about nine. And the other thing that was interesting in this in this research, and we we used waff with data UM forty percent of all WAFFWA wild sheep conservation agency dollars comes from one organization and that's the wild Foundation. Really yeah, so you know, we have a we have a very relatively small footprint when it comes to membership at we cast a very very long shadow when it comes to conservation and putting money on the ground. Um. But you know, there's their sensibilities. Wyoming gives five tags away on on auction um if if while she Foundation went to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in the commission and advocated for another auction tag, our building would be burned down. So you know, it is controversial, it's but you know, check this out. Man. I put it to my brother. Another guy put it to my brother in a conversation, and my brother like, there's nothing he likes more than just like wrestling with ethical questions. So they put the governor thing to him, and he was saying that he feels on auction tags. He feels it in balancing the morality of it or in balancing the ethics of it. You need to look at what are the impacts of the auction tag. Because the auction tag is going to remove an animal from the landscape, but the money, if well spent, is probably going to add a higher number of tags to the general pool by the habitat work and relocation work and putting more sheep on the ground, so that that money might be pulling us sheep out of the pool and returning four or returning five or returning ten. So there are actually possibly more tags made available thanks to the auction tag than in spite of the auction tag. He nailed it. You know, we were talking about that unlimited ram. I can assure you, uh and and and we were looking at some data back in we've changed, we've changed the dynamic in Montana now and now there's an application fee of fifty bucks. But um, the amount of sheep revenue coming into Montana, Fish, Wildlife and Parks on on the unlimited tags and the limited tag eggs was less than two hundred thousand dollars. It was actually a lot closer to a hundred thousand dollars. Around a hundred forty thousand dollars. You can't pay a biologist in a truck and you know, uniforms and like on a hundred hundred and forty thousand dollars. You know that same year we sold the Montana tag for three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. We've sold that tag as high as four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. And you pointed out earlier nine of that money goes right back into fish, wildlife and parks in a dedicated sheep account. So we retained ten percent. Well, we spend a hell of a lot more than ten percent back in Montana. So one one percent of those dollars go right back onto the ground into Wild Chief Conservation in Arizona. It's one Wild Chief Foundation sells that tag. We spend a million dollars to put on a show to get somebody crazy enough to spend three hundred thousand dollars in a desert big horn sheep tag, and one hundred percent of that dollars is back to Arizona Game and Fish into a dedicated account to restore bighorn sheep and conserve bighorn sheep, and that that probably includes some disease spending. Absolutely, I'm like tipping more and more every year, So I tipped more and more in the direction of Like, it's just like one of those It's one of those things that you want to be like, yeah, man, I see where you're coming from. I'm not digging and you might. I'm not even asking you to esthetically like the auction tags, Like, I'm not asking you to like at the aesthetics of it, but it's almost like you cannot argue with the efficacy, you know. And I getting back to that unlimited I know that I had as a regular guy, you know, a nonprofit employee. As a regular guy, I had the opportunity to buy in effect a bighorn sheep. I was living in or in in Woman at the time. I was able to buy a bighorn sheep tag in Montana for seven and fifty bucks. Back then, as a Wyoming resident and hunt um big horn sheep in Montana. And I was able to do that only because some other crazy guy gal whatever had the wherewithal to spend three fifty dollars on one tag, and that money went to ensure that I had an opportunity to hunt in Montana. So I I look at it. You know, it's it. It can be unseeming. I look at a little different. I look at it as I am grateful that there are people out there that could give money to their alma mater. Uh, they could give money to cancer research, and they do. But there are those that have the wherewithal and they give it to wild sheep restoration and conservation. So um, instead of vilifying those folks, But we can't measure their motivation. Oh you you know, I mean you can't eat horns. I don't, you know. I think the way that I've I've said, you know a lot of us like to say hunting is conservation is a term We use a lot, you know, And I don't think that there's any better depiction of that, honestly than those auctions tag. When you take one tag out of the whole pool that funds seventy whatever percent of that conservation of that species, you know hunting, right, there is conservation. Yeah, the numbers are, Yeah, the numbers are. You're struggling with this, No, I'm not because yeah, because here's the thing. Here's what I like to do. I like take too, I like in wrestling with an idea, I like to take it to the extreme because one might come in and say, well, wow, man, that's a lot of money. Let's take all the tags and auction them all off, because that would be a hell of a lot of money. At which point, now I feel as though you have right. So we all agree that there's like that's that's not a tenable solution. So we all agree that somewhere in here there's a line, right, and we're like trying to like identify the line. Now to have a state do one that's pretty damn conservative. Do you guys have numbers on how much the raffle tag brings in? Um, I don't know if Garrett you have that, you know, Montana, It's it's typically a little shot of two dollars. Oh yeah, but it's significant. I mean it's significant. And that's you know that the you know, the auction tag is the is the main player. But you know, I probably you know hip pocket would be uh yeah, I wouldn't want to say a two thirds one third, but you know, maybe sixty of the money comes from the auction tag from a raffle. Have you guys ever calculated this out? Um, that's pretty good. I think my brother ran the numbers out. I can't remember if he was confident in it is. If the raffle tickets are five bucks, how much do you need to spend on raffles before you're doing better than just apply for the tag? Yeah, I just kind of think it's a surprisingly lower number, where like your odds of getting the tag increased bucks or something like that. No, the raffles, you know anyway, you know, bunch are our our community of chapters and affiliates. I mean that's you know, a raffle is so much better odds than any of any of the state or provincial if if there's an L A H up in the province, but you know, any of the L A H drawings, A raffles much better odds they're just throwing into the state. You're you're better off getting it, you know, if if you're an aspirational sheep hunter and we all are and you know, get into these raffles or you know, we've got you know, the gratuitous plug. But we've got less than one club, which is an organization or club if you will, within Wild she Foundation where for five bucks if you have not taken a Wild Sheep Ram, we're twenty five bucks. You're entered into a drawing for three doll sheep hunts that we give away at our convention. And we've got nine hundred or so, twelve hundred or so in that in that club within Wild Sheep Foundation. Um, you've got three chances. Uh, we we spice it a little bit, Steve, because the first drawn you don't have to be present, the second drawn you've got to be president, and the third you got to be present to win. UM at this last lesson one club reception and the receptions maybe a um one of our colleagues drew one of those. Yes, yeah he did, and and but that receptions maybe not the it's it's basically a beer fest. We went through twenty five kegs of beer in an hour and a half for three sheep takes. You bet, So you know, we maybe maybe our community is kind of a drinking club with a sheep hunting problem. But it's really cool. I mean, the energy in that room is absolutely electric. And you know when someone that has aspired to be kicked out of the club, and that's what we say, Hey, you join the lesson one club hoping to be kicked out, and you're kicked out when you take a ram um. You know, we're giving away opportunities for for relatively low dollars um and trying to augment the state and provincial drawings that that are pretty low. Ots. My buddies, I've been saying how after many years, I'm saying how I'm like taking a break from shot show and I say to my buddies and I'm gonna start I'm gonna spend a couple of years at a couple of other shows. And I've brought it up with multiple of my friends in the in the hunting industry, and they universally are like, dude, cheap show. It's fun, it's a family, you know, it's a it's a um. You know. We talked about the altruism, but what what's cool? And I think there's a little bit of a misnomer about who who we are because you know, the the talk comes about and I threw the numbers out, you know, four point six million dollars last year with a relatively small club. So the the the erroneous assumption is that, you know, it's just a bunch of rich folks. It really isn't it. The demographic our our our show are is you know, the age is going down and down and down because it's you know, there's something bad ass about hunting sheep. There's something something bad ass about wanting to hunt sheep. Uh, there's something bad ass about training to hunt sheep. So we're seeing our our attendants age go down and down and down. We have backpack races, indoor, backpack races outdoor. Um, you know, it's just it's just a fun time. But what what was interesting? And I had a guy come up to me and it was actually at the Lesson one Club this year, and he said, you know, um, I'm sitting here. There's people in there. Because now we let anyone go into the Lesson one Club. You don't have to be in the reception, you don't have to be a member. And people, I mean guys that have taken twenty seven sheep come into the lesson one club, just to see how cool it is for some new aspirational woman or man when their first sheep hunt. The first drawn is a female mountain climber that's dating a sheep and moose guide in Alaska outfit or in Alaska, and I mean, it was just fabulous. When she wants she you know, she wont a incredible Northwest Territories doll sheep bunch. She looks down at her boyfriend, and you know, she told me later she goes, you know, I couldn't sleep that nice. So I'm sitting there poking him, you know, in bed, going do you see what I want? Did you see what I want? You know? I mean, it's just it's it's it's cool. It's the family. But this guy came up to me and he says, hey, look, he goes, I I go to all the shows, and I do too. I mean, I'm a member of every all of the organizations are all great, and we support him. But he goes, you know, I walk around this room and I have the feeling that there are some real big players in here. He goes, I feel I can talk to anyone in this room, and anyone in this room we'll talk to me. So, yes, it's a it's a great family. And there's something about wild sheep. You know, we talk about sheep fever. You know, we talked about as being a sickness. But there's something about the places they live. Uh, there's something about how challenging it is to get up to where they live. Uh. It's something about the training that you have to do, the mental preparation, you know, and and it's probably in you know, Steve, you hunting places, that's just fabulous. Uh, and do it and do it the right way, do it the hard way, and do it the way that we all aspire to hunt. Um. But that's kind of the essence of sheep hunty. You know, you you gotta earn it. You know, it doesn't come easy. There's no easy ram. Yeah, it's for the hard players, it is, Steve. I'm I spent my life on Big Orange Cheap and I am a less than one member really I'm not. Yeah, Yeah, already made a decision. We're going to the uh well Sheep Show. Yeah, I want to go this year and it's not on shot show. It's February seven through to ninth, So we're we're off shot feasibly spread my wings. Man, I gotta check some new stuff out. I gotta checks some new stuff out. Um any uh, final thoughts around the table. We're doing the whole man. If you want, if you feel that it's all been said, you can just say it's all been said. I don't have any concluding bod man. I'm you know, as the preacher said, once I get started, generally I'm too lazy to stop. So I don't know if you want me to do that, but I you know, I do think it's worth just mentioning, you know, Steve and Jannest. It means a lot having you guys here, you know, and helping us talk about you know, what we do as an organization. We reality is we conserve a species that lives at fourteen thousand feet and that lives below sea level UM. And that includes a lot of animals along the way. So that's a good way of putting it. Man, I never thought that. Yeah. I mean when we do Guzzler projects, a frequent animal that visits as a desert tortoise. Right, you know, we just at a rehabilitation UM deal with encroaching conifers and uh, you know, the guy. When we kind of got done, it goes well, actually this is more meal their habitat than anything else. But um, you know, so we can serve that species, and we have to watch that chain of events happen all the way through those different different elevations as they migrate. We have to watch you know, just food, um, predator management obviously, domestic sheep conflict and a lot of people don't know that that happen. Has to happen, that chain has to happen the whole way for this to work. And the fact that you know, you guys are here and helping us tell that story, that just does good things for us, like helping sheep. You're touching a lot a while. But yeah, I mean you're you're you're taking an animal that lives in the wildest places on both ends of the spectrum and probably one of the more wild animals and nature and behavior, and therefore you encapsulate a lot of critters right in the middle. And and so what we do. You know what it has like and wild cheap conservation comes from us, and we conserve a lot of critters along the way. We'll put for me. You asked us if if we were optimistic and and I am. UM. I think a lot of times we focus on just the disease, just the just the negative side of of the story. And if you look at the numbers today, you have uh a better opportunity to see sheep, to hunt sheep. Uh My kids have, my grandkids have a better opportunity to draw a tag then than I did when I started my career. Uh, that's important to me, UM, I I and I do. I am confident that that uh. And I don't know. I've been accused of being Pollyanna. I've heard this one said that to me once. Uh, But but I'm confident that that we can come to the table and try to think outside of the box, think a little bit different. Scott tested on it earlier. The science is improving, We're learning more and more all the time. But I'm I'm confident that that we will come together to find solutions. And I'm talking about both while she advocates and the livestock industry to work together to achieve things that all of us benefit from. UM, I'm confident that that can occur. I I uh, I just think you know, the younger, younger generation, I I think they're smarter, I think they, Um, I don't know about that. Well, I just I just think I think that that the future is promising. And uh i uh, I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back to where we came from. We've we've invested too much blood, sweat and tears, uh to to be where we are today. And and I'm I'm proud of the whil You Foundation and proud of what we do every day. And I'm proud to work for the organization. UM, I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe in the mission. And and so I'm I'm I'm optimistic about where we're headed. And never got a sheep. Not on purpose, I'll say it that way through. I'm just saying, never got a sheep? Do you draw? Do you put in for sheep? Huh? A lot like Steve thirteen Western State? No, probably not that much. I don't know with that many, but handful? Can you guys answer this quickly? Because I heard a little I heard a rumor our Lama's bad. Oh, that's a That's the main thing I wanted to ask is my brother is my brother need to kill all is lamas camel it's yeah, you know, we're we're not as worried. No, just give it to me straight. Yeah, we're not as worried about him. There's there's some new papers coming out, Clay. Maybe you talk about Scott, you can talk about I know, uh, Helen Schwansea up in British Columbia is a little bit more concerned about him, um than we are. You know. It's kind of like pack goats. We're pretty concerned about pack goats. And and you know, as we as we learn more and more, pack goats seem to be more likely amovie free than than uh, you know, just a boar goat running around the so um. But but llamas can carry it. No, they can't carry micap Well, they shouldn't be able to carry micro plasma of a pneumonia, you know, the old of them. You know, the people keep a lot of people keeping texting me to bust my brothers. There's some potential diseases. Yeah, and we and it's it's kind of like it's another rock that we gotta in turn and gosh that we gotta get involved with the even even the pac industry thing. Pack goats are a big thing we're working with the pack goat industry right now to develop some best management practices that we believe would work. They would involve from testing and other things. Kevin Hurley's actually meeting with those folks here. You're distributing goat recipes. No no, uh, if you got a good go to do that. Yeah. So so anyway, it uh for the short version is for us at this stage of the game, it's not worth gamble with. We don't believe that it's worth of gall Have your brother tested, I will, Yeah, he can have his testing absolutely, Just he probably know he's not like, he's not a negligent dude. I just haven't talked about it with him lately. I'm sure that he's doing whatever he should be doing. And he's the kind of guy too. I think if someone like laid out for him, like a really compelling case, I feel like he'd just be like, Okay, I gonna buy a horse, which is smarter anyway. Well, he just doesn't have that that background. Man. People to grow up around horses. You can't catch him his wife a horse. I don't know. I don't want to say whisper. That's almost every day. Her dad grew up around horses. Are great grandfather recommends that he'd does not get involved with horses. Is this the brother that lives in Miles City. Yeah, and his wife comes from a long long line of horsemen, um breeders and you know, and ranchers, and she she's recommended that he temperamentally needs to steer clear of horses. Yeah, you got something? Was that? Was that your concluder? Yeah? Thank you. That's a good one, because I forgot about that. That was top of mind. Did we properly dodge it, No, but it was enough. I said, I got some code language. Yeah, we don't want to poke that one in the eye right now, we gotta get bigger fish. Right. I'll just rewind just a little bit. If there's you there might be some listeners that or maybe a little confused about the setup. Just something about the sheep ecology that in the in the situation that we're in. So historically sheep evolved in you know, in large metal populations of well connected subpopulation, so individual to to a hundred size groups. Right, So all these you're on domestic horn sheep, so they were you know, moving through the landscape. You know, maybe ram groups going to breed, different groups of use, and so we had this sort of network of connection depending on the habitat. Like think about the basin and range in Nevada, those mountain ranges that jump up out of desert. Sheep will go across those, right. So that's where in modern times we've got humans in the bottom sheep you know, fullyar on cheap here on sheep have down on top across. That's where we're running our problems. The river systems. They're traveling up and down, so their ecology and their their evolution is to move in between groups. And so functionally we want to manage four large groups of sheep rather than small isolated groups because there's all kinds of negative impacts of that. So we're kind of stuck in that that problem where we're like, Okay, here's a good piece of habitat, but we've got surrounded by domestics and we can't have sheep shooting out of it and going to talk to their their friends up river. We've kind of gotten ourselves into a little bit of a pickle, and so that's that's a little bit of a pickle. By thinking in pocket mentality, we can have a few here, we can have a few there, yes, but they can't. But if they come out, we can't. We can't let them come out in the valley or we're gonna remove them. So we've kind of got ourselves into a bind in that way. But but look at all this great sheep halitat we have, and we want to have sheep there. But at the same time, it's hard to let them be sheep because their natural tendency is to move around between groups and you know, eventually spread out. Polling excellent point in in in Texas. You know, we've built those populations metal populations. There's constantly interchange between populations and we've encouraged that because we haven't had the domestic sheep issues to deal with. So that's an excellent point. Trying to and trying to restore that connectivity of hers really like it's it's it's the pie in the sky and it's it's right and waff was um. You know, main goal as far as connectivity and metal population management, that that's the that's the goal we're shooting for, not just to have one big population or one robust one here. We need a bunch of them. They are all functioning together, exchanging to the neck material, and they're talking to each other, they're they're more resilient to disease outbreaks when you have a whole bunch of different scattered groups of sheep and they're they're moving their genes in between, and it's just it's it's the setup. We need to go for it. And it seems to give you a situation to have localized disasters horrible winners and and and then hopefully get them back without needing to then have it be by a helicopter exactly. So that was just one thing I think people might missed out on if they're not familiar with sheep and how they've evolved. It's a good point. It's it's yeah, it spans habitat types too generally. Um, and then I guess my my little concluder is I mean, we've we've had a great discussion today and thank you for having me. Um, And a lot of the sheep have tats on public land, So folks listening, if you if this hit strikes a chord, get involved. I mean, it's a public lands, public wildlife. You know, you need to be if you want to be heard, got to be there, you know. And a lot of these decisions are being made, you know, policy level stuff that's disconnected from the science, and if you don't like it, you need to be there. And so that's my main point is get involved. These are these are everybody's sheep and we need to be be there to make good decisions. And uh yeah, so and I hope that everybody listening will be able to someday draw sheep tag. You know you've hunted all over the West. How many big horn mountains have you passed? Sheep mountain, sheep ridge, big sheep ridge. Most of them don't have sheep. I think we need to get We need to get there where big horns and sheep mountains are are restored with sheep, bighorn sheep. Yeah, if every sheep mountain had a sheep on it would be in good shape. One last concluder, one last concluder. UM, Steveana's first, first and foremost. UM. I want to thank you for the opportunity I talked about while Chef Foundation casting a broad concert Baian shadow. Um, you cast a huge communications shadow and a lot about what we were talking about today was education, and you've provided us an opportunity to educate a hell of a lot of people and we're grateful. Um. The final thought that I'd like to to to say is that you know, we we you touched on it on this the extremes. You know, there's extreme on the right, that's extreme on the left. UM. And I've said this a few times a few different groups, and I think it resonates. If if we could concentrate, whether it's the non consumptive community, the hunting community, the conservation community, the environmental community, the domestic sheep industry, the cattle industry, the you know whatever, and the wild sheep Avasacie community, if we could aspire, work and focus on the eighty to ninetent that we agree on and not spend all our time on the ten to that we dis agree on, we can move mountains. So that's kind of our new narrative. Let's let's start looking at the areas where we agree and work on those and not bitch and moan and focus on the areas we disagree. It's an interesting idea that you imagine a big room and everyone's in it, and you make an announcement if you think wild sheep are cool, come over in this room, and most people are gonna wander in the room and then start there. Ye, put our differences aside. Look for areas that we can work together, not areas that we spend all our time fighting. Yeah, you'll get a lot of work done in that space. We'll put and keep cheap on the mountain wild sheep. Now, what's an admirable goal? Man? I think that anyone who you know is up in some high crazy mountain peak where you're just kind of like happy with yourself or just haven't gotten up there, and to see one of those things crashed out and turn his head and there's those curls. It's just magical. Makes it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It's like you are you're seeing, touching, feeling wilderness. All right, Well, thank you very much for coming on everyone. I appreciate the time.