Western Watersheds Project, along with the Hells Canyon Preservation Council and The Wilderness Society have succesfully protected bighorn sheep in the Payette National forest by preventing the trailing of domestic sheep through the Salmon River Driveway.

Litigation pursued by WWP and partners was succesful in compelling the Forest permittee to truck their sheep to Weiser rather than risk judgement in court.

Trailing would have unduly risked transferring domestic sheep disease to bighorn sheep by exposing the two along Cuddy Mountain near Hells Canyon.

Update:

High Country News has featured the Payette Bighorn legal battle in its most recent issue. The subscription only article sheds some light on the history of Bighorn throughout the West and specifically in Hells Canyon :

At one time, an estimated 10,000 bighorns inhabited nearly 6 million acres of steep canyon walls and rugged high country in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Native people used the sheep for meat, clothing and tools and crafted a small, technologically advanced bow from the horns. The Indians left numerous depictions of bighorn sheep on rock outcroppings; some of these petroglyphs can be seen today along the Snake River.

Their precipitous decline in numbers is widely accepted to result from a pneumonia transmitted from domestic sheep to the Bighorn sheep. But Forest Service’s unwillingness to protect the Bighorn sheep on their own despite the overwhelming science suggests:

“After dealing with this for years, we know that the agency won’t do it unless they are put in a box and slowly submerged in cold water,” says Jon Marvel

It worked – the Bighorns will not be exposed to domestic sheep disease.