Tree-Cutting Plan to Aid Bighorns Stirs Up a Ruckus

When man tinkers with nature, there is frequently a fuss. Such is the case here in the Owens Valley, where U.S. Forest Service officials have sparked a flap with a seemingly innocuous project designed to benefit the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep.

Anxious to aid a small herd of the threatened sheep that winter above Lone Pine in the Inyo National Forest, rangers plan to chop down 50 acres of pinon pine trees on a steep hillside overlooking the south fork of Diaz Creek.

Experts say the project--the first of its kind attempted by the Forest Service--will create a new expanse of open habitat favored by the timid animals and allow them to more easily detect their primary predator, the mountain lion.

“Sheep are hesitant to walk through an area that is dense with trees because their best defense is their sight,” said Robin Hamlin, a Forest Service biologist. “We want to open this corridor so they’ll pass through and reach the green, nutritious forage down below. They have been unwilling to do that because they are afraid of getting eaten.”

While applauding the rangers’ good intentions, critics call the proposal downright absurd. Some predict that cutting down trees will do little to deter hungry mountain lions, while others protest that removing pinon pines will rob other forest denizens of protective cover and nesting perches.

“This plan is foolish, a waste of time and money. It leaves me speechless,” said Ron Schiller of Ridgecrest, one of a handful of local folks lined up against the project. “The lions are still going to kill sheep. If there’s not a tree around, the lion will hide behind a rock, or tall grass, or something else.”

Tilly Barling, a former member of the Desert Bighorn Sheep Council, called the project “ridiculous” and chided Forest Service officials for not assessing its impact on other species.

In a July 14 letter to the Forest Service, Barling decried the proposal as “human meddling” and predicted that removal of the trees could deprive other animals of cover and protection, mostly squirrels and birds.

Moreover, she wrote, Indians in the Owens Valley collect pinon nuts in the project area both to eat and sell. Although no protest has yet been heard from local Shosone and Paiute tribes, Barling said removing the trees will limit the Indians’ harvest.

Schiller, chairman of a hybrid group of hunters, campers and off-road vehicle enthusiasts known as the High Desert Multiple-Use Coalition, has formally protested the proposal. Because of the group’s complaints, Forest Service officials have delayed the tree cutting while they consider the appeal.

Ron Keil, resource officer for the Mt. Whitney Ranger District, said he could not predict the outcome, but he expressed surprise at the uproar over the $4,000 project.

“We’re not talking about clear-cutting the forest. We’re talking about thinning things out,” Keil said. “If you’re standing down here in Lone Pine, you won’t even be able to see it. We’re just trying to help out the sheep.”

The Sierra Nevada bighorn is one of three subspecies of mountain sheep found in California. The other two are the Nelson bighorn, found in Death Valley and elsewhere in the desert, and the Peninsular bighorn, which occurs between northern Baja California and the mountains near Palm Springs. Only the Nelsons are not considered threatened.

Once, the Sierra Nevada was teeming with the majestic bighorns. But disease and hunting all but wiped them out, and biologists have been working to re-establish the animal since 1979. Today the mountains host five herds, totaling about 325 sheep.

Among them are the 40-odd animals that spend the winter above Lone Pine. Known as the Mt. Langley herd, their population has grown from an initial 11 sheep introduced in 1980. Besides the original group, another 15 were released there in 1982.

While experts consider the herd a success, they note that its growth has been slow, in part because of mountain lion predation.

John Wehausen, a biologist with the University of California’s White Mountain Research Center who has studied Sierra Nevada bighorns for 15 years, said his observations of another herd to the north revealed that 75% of the sheep deaths he recorded were due to mountain lions. Clearing trees will give the sheep an edge in their battle to avoid being ambushed by such enemies, he said.

But more importantly, opening a break in the forest will encourage the skittish animals to descend to lower terrain, where the forage is richer in nutrients they need.

“Skiers have seen them up at the alpine level, and there’s nothing to eat up there in winter,” said Wehausen, who would like to remove trees elsewhere in the Sierra if the project succeeds. “It’s especially important for ewes to get this nutrition during gestation.”

While Wehausen and others agree that the tree-cutting plan could deprive other species and thus is something of an ecological trade-off, most argue that bighorn sheep deserves the advantage.

“I happen to like sheep an awful lot, and there are a lot more birds than there are sheep,” said Vern Bleich, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, which supports the Forest Service project.

Moreover, rangers argue that the pinon groves carpeting the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada have become unnaturally dense because man has stepped in to put out fires that once controlled their growth.

Schiller, meanwhile, believes that Forest Service officials have picked the wrong target in their effort to help the sheep. “The enemy is not trees,” he said, “it’s mountain lions.”

Consequently, Schiller--a hunter himself--argues that the lions should be relocated or subjected to a legalized hunt.

But Forest Service officials respond that they are not in the wildlife management business. And as for mountain lion hunting, the state banned the practice in 1971 and the courts have so far blocked efforts to revive it.