Sue Lani Madsen: Science, sheep and the power of headlines

The small public meeting on Wednesday in Colfax was not normal bureaucracy. No charts on the wall with Post-it notes for comments. No three-minute testimony time. It was an honest conversation around a table on the application of science to policy.

The subject was domestic sheep grazing and bighorn sheep conservation. Rich Harris of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife saw the basic problem as a difference in understanding the science. Dr. Jill Swannack, president of the Washington State Sheep Producers, saw it as a difference in goals.

The science involved is related to studies of deadly pneumonia outbreaks in bighorn sheep herds. Echoing language common in climate change debates, the science is occasionally described as settled and those who aren’t on board as deniers, but those inflammatory terms were avoided on Wednesday.

Like climate change, the core conflict is over how to act on the science. WDFW has proposed a science-based program that is as controversial among ranchers as any discussion of carbon taxes is among the general population.

I was not a neutral observer. Dr. Swannack is a neighbor and our family ranch’s trusted veterinarian. Whatever policies are developed for sheep are usually applied to all small ruminants including goats, and we make our primary household income as goat producers.

The story has the potential to generate the same sensational headlines as climate change, slanting the story before you read it. The reader’s bias will determine reactions to these three possible headlines:

“WDFW will spend hunters fees to raise sheep at Walla Walla State Pen”

“WDFW makes plans to reduce risk of pneumonia to bighorn sheep”

“WDFW program ignores Washington domestic sheep industry”

They are all true but incomplete. They appeal in different ways to the taxpayer, hunter, wildlife-lover and rancher.

It is true that WDFW is working on a program to raise a flock of disease-free domestic sheep at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary to trade out animals with very small domestic flock owners.

The source of funding is hunting fees and other department funds designated for wildlife conservation. The goal is to reduce the threat of virulent pneumonia outbreaks decimating bighorn sheep herds.

WDFW sees eliminating the bacterial carriers in domestic flocks as the only available option to interrupt a possible cycle of transmission between domestic and wild sheep. Dr. Swannack pointed out that eliminating the bacteria is an impossible goal. I pointed out that small flocks are often pets rather than livestock and owners may not be interested in a trade.

It is true that WDFW is making plans to reduce the risk of pneumonia in bighorn sheep herds. It is a science-based plan, and it may work. But translating science into policy is a dance of probabilities as the number of variables increases in the field.

The conversation on Wednesday wrestled with questions about both the complexity of the science and the potential effectiveness of the program. WDFW is still working on a metric to monitor if the probabilities are paying off in real results instead of measurement by budget. It’s too easy to count success as “look, we spent money on a program we predicted will work.”

The last headline is also true, but the most misleading. It is true that WDFW had – until the meeting on Wednesday – mostly ignored the domestic sheep industry.

But what I heard WDFW staff saying on Wednesday convinced me it wasn’t agenda-driven but an overabundance of focus.

They take their duty to protect bighorn sheep herds seriously. They are not the Department of Agriculture. They aren’t supposed to be thinking about the domestic sheep industry and they didn’t until Dr. Swannack started sending letters full of questions.

To their credit, WDFW did reach out. The original plan focused only on the bacteria correlated with pneumonia. They listened to advice on diseases of concern to sheep producers, both to aid the domestic producers and make their wildlife program more successful. Breeding sheep free of pneumonia but carrying other diseases would be a wasted effort.

Bureaucratic normal too often leads to wasted efforts. Here’s hoping there will be more conversations this fall.