Adopt A Wildlife Acre

Following nearly two decades of success in the Northern Rockies eliminating conflicts between livestock and wildlife on 1.3 million acres public lands, in 2017 the National Wildlife Federation expanded its Adopt an Acre program to Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. Like in the Northern Rockies, over the last century populations of bighorn sheep populations in Colorado have dramatically declined to small remnants of their historic numbers due largely to a number of diseases that are transmitted from domestic sheep to their wild cousins. Once infected, bighorn herds can experience an all age die-off that wipe our 60-90% of the herd. Since bringing on a new employee to manage the Southern Rockies and Great Basin region, we have been laying the groundwork necessary to achieve our goals of retiring several hundred thousand acres of grazing allotments over the coming decade. Working with partners from a number of state wildlife agencies and partner organizations, we have identified the domestic sheep allotments that pose the greatest threats to bighorns developed a network of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management personnel that manage these allotments. Following this background work, we began reaching out to the ranchers that hold the permits for this high risk grazing allotments.

The first fruit of these labors is our April agreement with a multi-generation ranching family to retire their two domestic sheep allotment on the Rio Grande National Forest, high in the South San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado. The Cornwall and Willow Mountain allotments cover approximately 9,000 acres and fall directly in the middle of the core range of a very high priority herd of bighorns. The total cost of this deal is $82,500 of which we have, raised $40,000. To complete our commitment to the ranching family, we have a goal of raising an additional $42,500. At approximately $9 per acre, we believe this is a very good value for permanently protecting one of Colorado’s highest priority bighorn herds. This is the first of what will be many thousands of acres of grazing allotment retirements in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah as step by step, we work to restore bighorn sheep to the Southern Rockies, the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin. As always, we are grateful to our supporters for investing in this innovative conservation solution, we could not do it without your help.

Links:

• Short video of bighorn sheep in Colorado