7-19 IAN Sheep Safety

 There are a lot of sheep in the mountains of Idaho and poor sheep ranchers are always dodging bullets from the environmentalists in terms of intermingling of their herds with wild sheep and the domestic sheepherders are accused of causing pneumonia in the wild herds. I was talking with the executive director of the Idaho wool growers Association, Stan Boyd, the other day and we started tossing around the  vulnerability of sheep to wolves and what measures ranchers could take to protect them.“They talk about red flags, flagiary, how effective is that? You see on the golf courses fake coyotes with geese standing right next to them. The wolves get used to it and also the flagiary gets wound up in the sagebrush. So the effects are minimal. And with sheep widespread, 50 in this Canyon and 60 in that canyon,  can dogs be helpful? They help but they don’t eliminate it. Sometimes they are 70% effective and in the next situation they might only be 20% effective. And you’re right when they are scattered out dogs can’t be everywhere and you can’t buy 100 dogs and they tend to travel themselves. So net net you going to get loss lands anyway. Yes.