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Forest seeks skier input on sheep

Bridger-Teton wants to protect isolated bighorn herd from winter disturbance.

By Rebecca Huntington

Bridger-Teton National Forest managers want to work with skiers and snowboarders to designate travel routes through bighorn sheep winter range in order to protect the state's smallest, most isolated herd.

Numbering just over 100 animals, the Targhee bighorn sheep population is all that remains of a herd that once roamed from the west side of the Teton Range to the valley bottoms of Jackson Hole and overlapped with sheep in the Snake River and Gros Ventre mountains.

The herd harbors a historic and genetically pure profile since no outside bighorns have ever been reintroduced to the area, according to biologists. Reintroductions have been used to restore sheep populations that have disappeared elsewhere.

In order to protect this unique herd, the Forest Service is seeking ways to reduce human disturbance in crucial sheep winter range. Human influences on bighorn sheep habitat, including recreation, pose the biggest threat to stability of the herd, according to the Forest Service.

A study in the 1990s showed that bighorns winter on high, often wind-swept terrain from Static Peak in Grand Teton National Park south to Rendezvous Peak. Already, the National Park Service closes Static Peak, Prospectors Mountain and the Mount Hunt Area each winter to skiers to protect the sheep.

Now forest managers are facing similar pressures to protect crucial sheep winter range. Rather than close an entire area to skiers, forest officials say they want to work with skiers to identify popular access routes or ski lines that could be kept open while other less popular or wind-swept areas could be left to the sheep. Forest managers also are seeking skier reports of sheep sightings around Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

In 1999, the Bridger-Teton allowed the resort to permanently open gates allowing skiers to access out-of-bounds terrain. Previously, the resort only opened the backcountry gates on low avalanche danger days.

With the new open-gate policy, the national forest has seen an explosion in backcountry use around the resort. The change in recreation might have triggered a change in sheep movements and distribution patterns, said forest biologist Lance Koch. Forest officials are relying on skiers to help refine information collected in the 1990s prior to the policy change.

Better information from skiers could help maintain access while providing meaningful protection for sheep, Koch said.

"The less we know from the public, the more there's going to be restrictions because we didn't know," Koch said.

Last winter, the resort paid for a helicopter flight to allow the Wyoming Game and Fish Depart-ment to scan slopes for bighorns around the resort. Game and Fish biologist Doug Brimeyer said biologists didn't see any sheep but did see signs of sheep activity. Game and Fish plans to fly again next winter to better define bighorn winter range, he said.

"The agencies are striving to maintain the population and access," Brimeyer said.

In addition to increased public access due to the open-boundary policy, the Forest Service also approved a new guiding permit in 2004 that allows resort guides to take up to 721 skiers out-of-bounds, up from 300 under the previous permit. As part of that decision, forest officials require resort guides to report bighorn sightings and have reserved the right to impose bighorn sheep closures in the future.

Guided skiers, however, make up only a tiny percentage of skiers and snowboarders leaving resort boundaries daily to access terrain from Rock Springs Bowl to Jensen Canyon. Radio-collar data suggest sheep use Rendezvous Peak and Upper Jensen Canyon, south of the resort, in winter. Sheep also use the ridgeline between Rendezvous Peak, the tram and Apres Vous Mountain as a travel corridor between wintering areas, data suggests.

Winter closures to protect bighorns in Teton park have triggered criticisms from skiers who question the Game and Fish policy of hunting the at-risk herd. This year, Game and Fish issued four hunting tags for the herd, but hunters did not kill any bighorns, Brimeyer said. Hunters kill on average one sheep every two years, he said.

Brimeyer defended the policy, saying that hunting occurs when sheep are in prime condition in the fall and when sheep have unlimited access to summer range. In winter, sheep are restricted to marginal, high-elevation terrain, cordoned in by snow. That makes skiers much more likely than hunters to come into close contact with bighorns, he said.

Moreover, hunters, through the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, have helped pay for the buy-out of four domestic sheep grazing allotments on the west side of the Teton Range. Domestic sheep compete with wild sheep for habitat and can spread deadly diseases that devastate wild herds.

"We removed another hurdle for this sheep population to expand," Brimeyer said of the grazing buy-outs.

To get involved, call Ray Spencer at 739-5415 or Koch at 739-5411.