Sheep, Golfers Butt Heads Over Use of Desert

The threatened Peninsular bighorn sheep have their name emblazoned in huge silver letters at the posh Bighorn Country Club. In nearby Rancho Mirage, gardeners at the hilltop Ritz Carlton hotel plant petunias to beckon the sheep for a munch. The bighorn profile, so romantically linked to rugged hillside wilderness, is a favorite on the T-shirts, coffee mugs and key chains sold in the tourist shops in downtown Palm Springs, second only to images of palm trees and Bob Hope.

But the wild, flesh and blood version of this desert resort icon is sliding quickly toward extinction, environmental officials say, and efforts to ensure the species’ survival are butting heads with another desert passion: golf.

Contrary to popular notion, these Peninsular bighorn do not roam along the rugged mountaintop ledges, but live in the desert’s foothills--the same hills where developers want to plant elevated golf holes with commanding views.

The turf war opponents are close to par: There are 91 golf courses in the Coachella Valley and 95 sheep. But eight more golf courses in sheep habitat are in the works, and one of them could disrupt a bighorn breeding program that has released 70 sheep into the wild since 1985.

The battle lines over the bighorn are as unpredictable as the zigzags of a sheep trail. Famous duffer and former President Gerald Ford and senior Professional Golfers Assn. star and big-game hunter Dave Stockton sit on the board of the Bighorn Institute, a nonprofit agency dedicated to the conservation of wild sheep. And the institute’s biggest fundraiser, scheduled for Monday, is a golf tournament.

“I understand why they want to build golf courses into the hills,” Stockton said. “Some of the vistas are incredible. And I’m not the kind to stop a dam over some endangered leech, but I look at the bighorn sheep as an unbelievable symbol of the wild. If it comes down to a choice between golf courses and the sheep, I’ll weigh in for the sheep.”

Mark Jorgensen, a state resource ecologist who has studied the sheep for 30 years, says the number of bighorn sheep from Palm Springs to the Mexican border has dropped to 280, from nearly 1,200 in 1979.

“The bighorn cannot handle any more encroachments into their habitat,” he said. “But as long as you can take 100 acres of desert, put a pond and some trees and make a million dollars, I don’t see an end to it. We’re going to lose this fight. The sheep will be gone.

“In my mind, that valley is Sodom and Gomorrah--total excess. How many golf courses do they need?”

Well, there is enough demand to build at least 28 more over the next 10 years, said John Shumway, president of Market Profiles in Costa Mesa. “The tourist element in the Coachella Valley is huge,” he said. “These are amazing numbers.”

Scott Nassar, general manager of the Ritz Carlton, said his hotel has tracked $40 million in lost revenues over three years because it does not have a golf course. The hotel now plans one in a mountain cove, a site approved last year by voters in Rancho Mirage and neighboring Cathedral City.

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It’s springtime in the desert. Biologist Chuck Willmott scrambles up a sheep trail framed by lavender verbena and the yellow blooms of creosote.

His eyes fix on three bighorn sheep that suddenly break the ridge and are outlined against the sky. One has heavy udders; she’s close to delivering a lamb. They gaze at the humans below.

“That’s the thing about sheep,” Willmott said. “They have no problem staring at you for hours. I come up here to observe them, and they observe me right back.”

Below, the valley is blanketed with green golf courses and shimmering, turquoise swimming pools, seemingly a world apart from the bighorn.

“It’s difficult to make people understand the correlation,” said Jim De Forge, executive director of the Bighorn Institute. “But you don’t have to have a bighorn sheep standing on a golf tee for it to be impacted by a golf course.”

Among the dangers, he said, are deadly parasites that the sheep pick up from the golf courses, the constant flight response set off by traffic and noise, and the isolation of herds. Historically, rams crossed canyons to mate with ewes in other herds. Now, developments in the canyons inhibit the movement, resulting in isolated, inbred herds that are more susceptible to illness.

DeForge said brushes with development have killed at least 12 adult bighorn since 1991. Five were struck on the highways, five succumbed to poisonous oleanders and other ornamental plants, one strangled on barbed wire and another was killed by parasites.

“The single biggest reason for threatened species is loss of habitat,” said Kevin Brennan, a state Department of Fish and Game biologist. “The sheep are becoming fish out of water.”

Mark Bragg, developer of the Shadowrock golf course below the Palm Springs Aerial Tram, disagrees that golf courses are endangering sheep.

“It’s real easy to get emotional and think, ‘Big bad developers, poor little sheep,’ ” he said. “But there is no scientific proof that 280 animals can’t survive in 3 1/2 million acres that are still open” between here and the Mexican border.

As part of a 1993 settlement with the Department of Fish and Game, Bragg eliminated 96 homes from his project, donated 800 acres and $300,000 for more sheep habitat, and gave $50,000 for ongoing research, for a total price tag of $3.5 million.

Bragg says there are no more sheep on his property--and that they were declining before the advent of hillside golf courses.

Indeed, most of the lamb deaths in the 1970s and 1980s were attributed to viral pneumonia. The Bighorn Institute, founded in 1982, focused research on the disease. The institute’s captive breeding program was a byproduct of treating lambs who were nursed back to health and then released into the wild.

Since then, however, the number of sheep has continued to plummet, heightening the importance of the breeding program. In one herd of 22, 17 are the progeny of the captive breeding program.

Now, in the most direct face-off between conservationists and developers, a golf course next door to the institute may force the organization to move its lambing pens.

A lawsuit between the institute and the original developer over the need for a bighorn buffer zone bled the institute’s finances, and it ultimately agreed to move the pens.

That golf course project died, but a similar one is now proposed. However, if an equal or better place for the lambing pens is not found, government officials may not allow the pens to be moved.

The name of the proposed development? Canyons at Bighorn. It promises luxury villas, a championship golf course--and bronzed sculptures of bighorn sheep.