by RALPH MAUGHAN
Big pile of dead sheep in remote Idaho mountains.
While uncommon, this sort of thing has happened before in Eastern Idaho and Western Wyoming. It’s not a pretty picture. 176 sheep lie dead below a rocky slope near Fogg Hill, deep in what is called The Palisades Backcountry in Idaho near the Wyoming border. This is part of the Snake River Mountains, just south of the famous Teton Range.
The sheep were stampeded by two remnant members of local wolf pack that had already been mostly killed off by the federal government’s wildlife killing agency, Wildlife Services. The stampede took place in the dark, explaining how the sheep could fall as they ran and end up suffocating each other in a big, remarkably compact pile.
Reports are that the two remaining wolves from the already-government-decimated 15-member wolf pack stampeded the sheep (119 lambs and 57 ewes). The sheep suffocated when they stumbled on top of each other while running down the slope. One sheep was eaten. Ten others reportedly showed wolf bites.
According to the Jackson Hole News and Guide, the damage was $20,000. The sheep were owned by the Siddoway Sheep Company of Terreton, Idaho. Terreton is not in southeast Idaho as so many geographic challenged reporters of the incident have written. The incident was not in southeast Idaho either. Terreton is about ten miles south of Montana in northeast central Idaho. The incident was in Eastern Idaho, miles from Terreton. It was 5 or 6 miles south of the town of Victor. The Siddoways have leased sheep grazing allotments for many years in this general Eastern Idaho area close to the Wyoming border.
The Siddoway Sheep company put out a news release stating “[they] had lost about 250 head of livestock to wolf, bear and coyote depredation since June”.”
Travis Brunner of the Western Watersheds Project reported that the sheep company paid $866.70 to graze the allotment in the scenic proposed wilderness area for 3 months in the summer. Brunner told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that the low grazing fee and the lack of protection wolves now have allows ranchers to graze predator heavy areas of the national forests and get the wolves removed by Wildlife Services with only a phone call.
It is difficult to be callous about the loss of so many sheep and so many wolves. Sheep are tender animals, hardly suited to this rugged, wild country in my opinion. This reporter knows the Palisades Backcountry well after backpacking and writing four editions of “The Hikers Guide to Idaho” and its successor “Hiking Idaho.” Fogg Hill is one of the two times in my life when I got lost. I found my way out after about six hours — very confusing country.
The Palisades Backcountry has always been home to bears, including increasing numbers of grizzlies, coyotes, cougar, many elk, deer and moose, and a thriving herd of reestablished mountain goats. In the summer the high country here becomes covered with a dense growth of tall flowers that hide the rocks underneath.
Some reports on this event have been wildly inaccurate. Outdoor Life, for example, wrote, “If you have any doubts about the gray wolf’s hunting ability, or its impact on livestock, you should talk to the sheepherders in Idaho where two wolves recently zeroed in on a flock of 2,400 sheep near Idaho Falls.”
It is strange that anyone would think that finding a bedded herd of 2400 sheep showed profound hunting ability, and sheep are easy to spook, as I found out at age ten when my cocker spaniel found his first band of sheep in the northern Utah mountains. He promptly stampeded the herd of several hundred over a hill in front of the sheep herder who happily enough did not shoot my little dog.
Another story called the wolf-killing agency “Idaho Wildlife Services” as though it was a state agency. While their actions might make some believe it is a state agency, they are actually a federal agency — part of APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The wolves did not kill 176 sheep. It it an open question if they directly killed any. The wolves did set the sheep running in the dark. That is why we wrote a slightly different headline than other news media.
Wildlife Services found one more wolf and killed it. Whether they killed any additional wildlife is a matter for investigation.