Diseased bighorn sheep might have to be killed in Mojave National Preserve

Desert bighorn sheep gather at night on June 6 at a guzzler set up to provide water for the herd. A virus that is killing sheep in the largest herd at the Mojave National Preserve is described as "a grim situation" by spokeswoman Linda Slater.

By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Wildlife officials in California might resort to killing desert bighorn sheep in an effort to contain an outbreak of a deadly disease now spreading through the largest herd in Mojave National Preserve, 100 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

At least 20 dead sheep have been found in the past month on Old Dad Mountain, about 15 miles southeast of Baker, Calif. Tests have confirmed that at least some of the animals died from a strain of pneumonia generally transmitted by domestic sheep and goats and usually fatal to bighorn.

“It’s really kind of a grim situation to be perfectly honest with you,” said Linda Slater, spokeswoman for the 1.6 million-acre preserve.

Officials from the National Park Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife are now considering whether to hunt down sheep showing signs of sickness. But even that might not be enough to halt the spread.

“To really get rid of the disease, you have to kill every animal, but that’s not practical or likely to happen,” Slater said. “There are no good management options.”

Wildlife officials in Nevada are watching the situation anxiously, hoping the sick animals can be contained somehow before they come into contact with sheep in the Silver State.

The diseased herd is “only a 45-mile trip as the crow flies” from mountains that harbor desert bighorn at the southern edge of Clark County, said Doug Nielsen, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

“We do have some right down there close to the state line. So it’s a concern, and it’s something that needs to be monitored.”

Slater said the afflicted animals are part of what she called “the biggest and healthiest herd” in Southern California. Transplants from the group have been used in the past to bolster struggling herds elsewhere in California, she said.

Bighorn have no natural resistance to pneumonia and tend to die at a high rate. Those that survive become carriers, infecting newborn lambs in a cycle that can ravage the herd for up to a decade.

Biologists may never know for certain how the isolated herd of 200 to 300 sheep was exposed to the disease, but they have their suspicions.

Slater said a domestic goat turned up in the area about six months ago — a rare and unexplained find — but the animal showed no signs of pneumonia. However, tests for the disease are not always reliable, she said.

Biologists and veterinarians “seem really pessimistic that anything can be done” to keep the entire herd from being exposed, Slater said. The worry now is that the disease will spread to one of four other herds in the preserve, possibly by a ram sent wandering when rutting season gets underway in the coming weeks.

Volunteers from the Sierra Club and the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep assisted with the initial search for sick and dead animals. A lack of resources and the remote, rugged location of the herd have hampered efforts so far to address the outbreak, Slater said.

Back in Nevada, wildlife officials are hoping that hot, dry weather this summer will keep the affected herd close to the water sources in its home range and away from other herds. Beyond that, Nielsen said, there isn’t much that can be done from the Nevada side of the state line but to wait and watch what happens.

Bighorn sheep once roamed nearly every mountain range in Nevada, but their numbers began to decline in the mid-1800s, as settlers and prospectors swept into the region, mostly in the north.

By 1960, disease, unregulated hunting and habitat loss had reduced Nevada’s bighorn population to about 1,200 animals in a handful of ranges, none of them north of Ely or west of Hawthorne.

Wildlife officials launched the Bighorn Sheep Release Program in 1967 to return the official state animal to its former glory.

Today, Nevada is home to more bighorn sheep than any other state — better than 10,000 adult animals in at least 60 different mountain ranges.

But disease always looms as a threat to those gains.

In 2010, pneumonia nearly wiped out a herd of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in the Ruby Mountains near Elko.

The most recent outbreak in Southern Nevada struck in 2002 in the Specter Range, along U.S. Highway 95 about 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

After several years of what Nielsen called “very low lamb survival,” the herd’s numbers finally began to rebound in 2009.

Direct Reduction

from Preserve the Herds





It was the brutally cruel and inhumane treatment of wild horses through a host of barbaric “solutions” such as mustanging, poisoning water holes, driving them off cliffs, and the bloody road to slaughter that sparked public protest to end this ugly historical chapter of the American West.

The Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act was suppose to close the door on these kinds of “on the range” kills and finally allow our animal brethren the freedom to live in peace after millenniums of domestication and service.

While supporters of the Act have often rallied against the hidden illegal slaughter and treatment of our now supposedly protected equines, the killing of America’s wild burros through “direct reductions programs” have often continued unabated through government agencies armed with the exclusively reserved right to put a bullet in our burros were they stood.

Congress charged the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture with the protection and preservation of our countries wild horses and burros as a response to the public's overwhelming love and desire to end their plight.

Despite this charge, the Secretaries have served at the pleasure of those who exploit our resources, not our laws or their intent, diligently working on ways to circumvent the political process and instead, exercising their authority to “legitimize” the corruption and corrosion of these mandates.

One of the many ways this was accomplished was through the institution of separate agency “missions” place under their jurisdiction that allowed national laws to be divided, segregated and ultimately usurped.

Enter National Park Service (NPS), established through the 1916 Organic Act under the mandate “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such a manner as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations" - that use to cover wild horses and burros as evidenced by the honor they bestowed on the wild burros of the Grand Canyon and elsewhere across the Nation.

Yet new policies - not laws - aimed at promoting “other agendas” began to be instituted, until finally, the Secretary of the Interior successfully shirked their charge of protecting wild horses and burros and their habitat through a total reversal that allowed National Park Service and other agencies to literally shoot them by the thousands if they had the unfortunate luck to reside on the wrong side of the jurisdictional tracks.

It began, at least as far as we know of, with the National Park Services plan to shoot the 577 wild burros then living within the Grand Canyon that the Fund for Animals halted through negotiating their amazing airlift rescues.

In 1984, the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California began to initiate a “direct reduction program” of 5,900 wild burros in the area. In the beginning, 649 wild burros were shot on the base under this management plan until their deaths were discovered by animal welfare groups who successfully lobbied again for the humane “live removals” of 864 more.

Over the course of the next four years, an additional 4,387 wild burros were then removed by “live captures” until their numbers totaled less than 200 and now “allowed the Naval Weapons Center to reintroduce the native ungulate, the Desert Bighorn Sheep.” (1)

Since 1975, the Sierra Club has also endorses the reductions of wild burros and horses and has developed an extensive policy regarding their “management” that includes: eliminating them from all national parks and monuments, all areas protected by the Antiquities Act, all federal and state lands where rare, endangered, threatened, or endemic species of flora or fauna exist, national recreation areas as well as “eliminating them from key wildlife habitat, including desert bighorn habitat of the American Southwest, from designated natural areas” and supports the “carefully regulated numbers to minimize conflict with wildlife, livestock, and other range values.”

According to Deanne Stillman’s article, The Last Burros of the Mojave Desert, from 1987 to 1994, National Park Service shot 400 burros in Death Valley, CA with plans to accelerate these direct reductions in 1994 when a status change placed Death Valley under NPS sole jurisdiction.

Even today, wild burros remain targets for “direct reductions” as only a few days ago, a news story reported at least 18 burros have recently been shot at Big Bend State Park in Texas to make room for the “native species of bighorn sheep”, who brought in almost $800k in raffle sales by those eager for a chance to hunt the horned ones now being touted as “the future” of management goals for Park.

In a scenario that has played out time and again, a thirty-five year veteran and Big Bends Park manager, Luis Armendariz, began investigations into the burro killings, which resulted in his superiors retaliating against him forcing his resignation on November 30, 2007.

For a glaring expose on what and how “direct reductions” of wild burros are being secretly carried out, visit American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, Death of a Mojave National Preserve Burro by J. & K. Foster.

The Last Burros of the Mojave Desert

The Huffington Post
by Deanne Stillman

The time has come to speak of the animals in attendance at the nativity, especially the burro, the stubborn, steadfast, and hardy little four-legged who has served us well through the ages, with barely a tip of the hat in the annals.

It was a burro that carried Mary and Joseph to the stable where Christ was born, a burro that carried Christ into Jerusalem for one of his last acts, a burro that accompanied his followers into other empires and across time, finally helping trappers, prospectors, and soldiers make their way into the Old Testament scenery of the American West.

Since then his descendants have lived in the desert, fending off predators, joy riders with guns, and government round-ups. But now the burros' time in the Mojave may be coming to an end, because of a federal policy of "zeroing out" the herds in areas where other critters and half-baked attempts to manage water that has already been mismanaged have taken precedence.

And who are these burros exactly? Well, let's meet Brighty, one of our western pioneers. There's a statue of Brighty the burro in the Grand Canyon Lodge. Brighty lived at the Grand Canyon from 1892 to 1922, along with countless other burros whose ancestors had come with the Spanish and carried the ensuing parade.

Named after the Bright Angel Creek in the canyon, Brighty originally belonged to a gold prospector. When the prospector was killed, Brighty was adopted by the park service. He helped build the canyon's first suspension bridge across the Colorado River and carried Teddy Roosevelt's packs on a hunt for mountain lions. He was an icon of the West when he died, and it would seem only fitting that the government honor his life by making sure that others of his kind could flourish in their desert home.

As I've written on this site, passage of the federal Free-Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act in 1971 spearheaded by Wild Horse Annie did exactly that - but in spirit only. It gave authority for mustangs and burros to the Bureau of Land Management, which meant that other agencies such as the National Park Service could make their own policy towards these animals if they lived on NPS land. To the park service, burros were not free-roaming but non-native, which meant that they had to go (see article on wild horses).

In 1979, the extirpation began - with Brighty's enduring family.

Because getting them out of the Grand Canyon would be difficult, all 577 of them were to be shot.

The late writer and animal defender Cleveland Amory intervened, along with his organization, the Fund for Animals, putting together a daring and complicated rescue in which the burros were airlifted from the canyon and taken to his Black Beauty Ranch in Texas, which he founded for this occasion. But that was the beginning of the end for the burro in national parks and preserves.

Since then, NPS has continued its policy of "direct reduction," and thousands of burros have either been shot by contract hunters or harried to their doom or into overcrowded government adoption pipelines in cruel airborne round-ups. From 1987 to 1994, the park service shot 400 burros in Death Valley alone - just one of various burro sites all over the desert West. When Death Valley went from monument to park status in 94, the park service amped up its plans to remove burros - and Death Valley's remaining wild horses. But another friend of the burro stepped up, just in time.

This was Diana Chontos, In 1990, the long-time rescuer of burros had taken six of them and made a two-year cross country wilderness trek through California to draw attention to their plight. When she heard about what was about to happen to the Death Valley burros in 94, she approached NPS with a plan.

After lengthy and difficult talks, she and NPS came to an agreement: the agency would not shoot burros if her organization, Wild Burro Rescue in Olancha, California just to the west of Death Valley, would organize, pay for, and remove the burros themselves. And that's what she's been doing since then.

"These annual live captures are conducted in hazardous conditions in rugged and remote mountain wilderness," she says. She almost died of renal failure at a recent capture because she just couldn't get enough water over a six-day period. And there were only two people doing the capture - she and her late partner, Tom Allewelt, who trimmed the hooves of the rescued burros and horses and helped to gentle them at their sanctuary in the Owens Valley.

There are still a few burros in Death Valley and soon, perhaps sometime next year, another capture will be planned - if she can raise the funds and head off a park service hunt. And that's the only reason she takes the burros out of the park - not for adoption, which is BLM policy.

On January 19th, 2007, the burros that live in the Clark Mountains of the Mojave Desert - the last in that region - will be gone, taken in a federal round-up (in this case by the BLM, which manages the area in question), perhaps memorialized like Brighty in a statue at the Mojave National Preserve, which has now turned its sights on that particular herd, whose home turf is the highest peak in that part of the desert at 7929 feet. This is on the north side of the preserve and sometimes if you're driving east on I-15, you can see them hanging out at Excelsior Mine Road.

As with wild horses, there's a dispute about exactly how many burros are left. Locals say maybe 30; the feds say 2-300. There's also a dispute over access to water, which was closed off when the park service took over part of the burros' range. NPS originally agreed to have water piped back into the BLM part of the burros' range, but then reversed course.

"Concerned citizens have volunteered labor and materials to complete the simple project at no cost to taxpayers," says Virginie Parant, of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. But so far, plans for the round-up are still in place. In 2005, another herd was taken off the preserve, and - according to the desert grapevine - two may have been shot in the process; there are photos of one burro with a bullet to the head circulating the ethers (although it's not clear which round-up that came from) and another was allegedly run to the point of exhaustion and death - the rumor is that he died a very slow and painful death as the contractors may have stood by. Not surprising if true; I have heard of and been an eyewitness to a staggering amount of tax-subsidized government abuse before, during, and after round-ups of wild horses and burros.

"They are destroying our Western heritage," says Jennifer Foster, a 23-year resident of Hesperia near the preserve. Jennifer and her husband Ken are two of a small group of high-desert locals who are planning a legal action to stop this impending and most final act.

At a recent BLM public comments meeting in Barstow, Mojave native Bobby Parker asked preserve officials if they knew of any studies that showed how the desert tortoise was faring since burro removal had been amped up in the region, given the fact that the burro is said to have a negative impact on the endangered species and that's one of the reasons it's being removed. No one could answer the question. (And by the way, the tortoise is one of my totems and I'm all in favor if its protection. But the Mojave is one vast creche indeed, with plenty of room at the inn for all manner of creatures, especially when water sources aren't blocked off).

A few months ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote a letter to the Interior Department, suggesting that when she lobbied for the Desert Protection Act which passed in 1994, she didn't intend for all burros to be eliminiated from the Mojave. The letter is posted here, along with information about other actions that can be taken. Asked about the letter at the hearing, officials said it had no bearing on their mandate.

Burros have much to tell us, as Diana Chontos says. In 2000, she rescued a burro from Death Valley and called him Yaqui. "He was respected by all of the younger jacks- the male burros - and they didn't chase him from food or water. He loved to be brushed and hugged. But one day he began to grow weak and could no longer get up from his naps without being helped and towards the end we rigged a blanket for shade and called a vet to ease his passing. One by one all 32 jacks came by and touched him some place on his body, then went back to their hay. Shortly after the last jack paid his respects, Yaqui took a deep breath and died." He was 50 years old, the vet said, the oldest equine he had ever seen. Had he helped a miner named Pegleg Pete find water? Maybe he had once led a lost pilgrim back to the trail. Or maybe he just lived in the Mojave Desert - for a long time, until he had to go.

THIS IS DEDICATED TO BARRY BRESLOW, TIRELESS ADVOCATE FOR WILD BURROS, WHO PASSED AWAY IN 2006, AND THE 49 BURROS WHO WERE GUNNED DOWN BY CULPRITS UNKNOWN ON GOOD FRIDAY, 1990, OUTSIDE OATMAN, ARIZONA.