In a win for sheep producers grazing in Colorado’s Rio Grande National Forest, a federal judge ruled domestic sheep grazing may continue despite environmental groups’ protests.
On March 7, Judge Daniel D. Domenico ruled against the Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. The environmental groups brought suit against the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in 2019 in an attempt to halt domestic sheep grazing in southern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, arguing the sheep posed a health risk to bighorn sheep.
“The science is overwhelmingly clear that the biggest risk to bighorn health is the diseases spread by domestic sheep grazing in and near bighorn habitat,” said Jonathan Ratner of Western Watersheds Project at the time of filing suit.
The subject of the lawsuit centered around the newly created Wishbone Allotment in the national forest, bordered by three bighorn sheep populations. The allotment comprises seven pastures, spanning about 23,000 acres. Environmental groups argued domestic sheep in the allotment would transmit Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, a respiratory bacterium that can cause pneumonia, to the nearby bighorn sheep.
The USFS studied the risk that domestic sheep would intermingle with wild herds, ultimately finding that sheep in the allotment posed a moderate risk of disease transmission to the neighboring bighorn sheep, rather than a high risk.
“The Forest Service therefore concluded that the Wishbone Allotment plan allowed for the ‘continued long-term persistence’ of local bighorn sheep ‘while also providing public land grazing opportunities for local livestock producers,’” according to court documents.
Domenico wrote in the ruling that USFS did not act arbitrarily or capriciously when it issued an assessment and finding based on its analyses. The environmental groups argued the agency should have relied solely on its computer model findings that found a high risk of exposure between the domestic and wild sheep, as opposed to also analyzing local factors.
“As the scientific literature indicates, such models may fail to ‘account for habitat connectivity as well as habitat type,’” Domenico wrote. “And, as at least one other court has acknowledged, the risk of contact model is but ‘one data point for analyzing the risk of disease transfer’ that has various limitations.”
USFS also found there would be additional spatial separation of the herds because the migration of local herds is fairly predictable and does not overlap with the grazing season.
“In particular, the Service found that the local wild herds moved away from the Wishbone Allotment (including to higher elevations) during the summer when domestic sheep would be allowed to graze,” Domenico said.
He ultimately ruled that USFS’s reliance on other factors in addition to the risk of contact computer model was not arbitrary or capricious.
“There is always some level of subjectivity in a relative ‘risk rating,’ but any such subjectivity does not render such a rating to be arbitrary or capricious, even if reasonable minds could disagree on the exact level of risk,” he wrote.
The Public Lands Council (PLC) said the decision gives sheep producers in Colorado more certainty.
“This decision is an important step to reinforce the agency’s discretion when it comes to best management practices and the risk of disease transmission,” the Public Lands Council wrote in its Weekend Roundup newsletter. The group continued that the decision further enforces that the risk of contact model should never be the sole deciding factor when determining domestic sheep grazing authorization. — Anna Miller, WLJ managing editor
