Which is more valuable to the country: bighorn sheep roaming the rocky wilderness of the San Rafael Reef or domestic sheep grazing through an adjacent flats?
The controversy over Joe Iriart's proposal boiled down to that choice.Iriart is a rancher, based in Price, who wanted to convert his federal grazing permit in the San Rafael Swell to allow him to graze sheep at McKay Flat as well as the cattle that he presently runs there.
McKay Flat is about 50 miles southwest of Green River, in a central portion of the San Rafael Swell. It is close to the San Rafael Reef, the sandstone spine that curves from near Hanksville to close to Green River.
The permit allows 416 cattle in the flat during the winter and early spring. Iriart wanted to change that to allow 1,500 sheep and 197 cattle.
Muddy Creek and Crack Canyon Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) are on the boundaries of the McKay Flat allotment. Under BLM rules, any such change cannot be allowed if it would impair the wilderness characteristics of those WSAs.
Desert bighorns were once numerous throughout much of southeastern Utah, before settlement. Bighorn petroglyphs show that they were present thousands of years ago in this very region.
But they were wiped out this century because of poaching associated with mineral exploration and ranching, introduction of livestock and loss of critical habitat such as water sources.
Livestock not only competed with native sheep for forage but also transmitted diseases.
The bot fly, for example, is just a pest to domestic sheep, but when domestic sheep graze a region and allow the fly to spread to bighorns, the parasite is often fatal to native animals.
The reason is that the bighorn's heads were designed with butting in mind, unlike their less frisky cousins. So the bighorns' great, spongy, chambered skulls trap bot fly larvae. The young flies die there, the tissue gets infected and the bighorns die.
According to the BLM, another disease threat from domestic sheep is the pneumophilic bacterium, which causes pneumonia.
Since 1983, 38 bighorns have been transplanted to the area along the San Rafael Reef.
"McKay Flat is estimated to support a population of at least five bighorn sheep at this time," says a BLM evaluation written in December. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources says that 352 bighorns was probably the area's carrying capacity in the past.
A total of 48,120 acres in the allotment is valuable as bighorn habitat. About 1,910 acres of this is deemed "crucial habitat," lambing areas for bighorn.
"Under the proposed action, the small population of desert bighorn . . . thought to occupy this area could be lost to disease in the first three to five years," the report says. "There is also risk of disease transmission into adjacent healthy desert bighorn sheep populations."
Two weeks ago, BLM officials issued a decision proposing to deny Iriart's request. The deadline for an appeal is about to expire.
The BLM did the right thing. To the agency, congratulations!
Still, there's a bot fly in the ointment.
A state permit allows the grazing of livestock on state land in the vicinity. The state does not specify which sort of livestock a rancher must use, said BLM spokesman Jerry Meredith.
That means a rancher could pile as many sheep as the state would allow onto state sections in the middle of federal wilderness study areas, critical wildlife habitat, or other type of sensitive region.
"As long as he keeps them on the state section, there is nothing anybody can do about it," Meredith said.
Dick Klason, who is the state forester and the man in charge of livestock grazing on state land, confirmed what Meredith said.
Until now, the state hasn't made a distinction in type of livestock that can be grazed under grazing permits. An animal-unit-month is an AUM, whether it applies to one cow or five sheep.
"This is becoming an issue in some areas like that," Klason said.
"I think it's something that we're going to have to look at at some point in time because it's becoming a bone of contention that people are becoming concerned about."
State regulations need to be tightened until they are at least as strong as the BLM's rules. Until then, the state landlord will be a bad neighbor for our federal land.