Out & About: Volunteer help drops at parks

PARKS – As the Washington State Parks System suffered severe budget cuts and laid off about 40 percent of its permanent staff in the past two years, the number of volunteer hours devoted to park projects also has been sharply dropping.

Volunteer hours in 2011 were 40,186 fewer than in 2010 and 66,453 fewer when compared to 2009, according an Associated Press report.

State parks officials blame the drop on the troubled economy and mandated background checks for volunteers.

They do not think the volunteer decline is related to dissatisfaction with the facilities or disaffection with the Discovery Pass entrance fee program.

They also say that budget cuts are partly to blame for the drop as those directly involved in coordinating volunteer outreach efforts lost their jobs or were assigned other tasks.

Chris Guidotti, Riverside State Park manager, said he was relieved to learn that agency has begun designating staff to coordinate volunteer projects.

Wild-sheep group funds disease study

OUTSTANDING – The Wild Sheep Foundation gave Washington State University Veterinary School researchers $275,000 last week to carry on with the search for a vaccine against the pneumonia strain that has ravaged wild herds across the West.

Foundation chairman Jack Atcheson Jr. of Butte said money is the key to finding long-term solutions and called for others such as the livestock industry to join the effort.

“The load is a little heavy,” he said, suggesting that state and grazing industries have been less than proactive. “If more people helped, maybe we could speed up the process.”

With a vaccine still estimated to be a decade or more away, the foundation members meeting in Lewiston and Pullman last week stood solidly behind the strategy that calls for keeping wild sheep and domestics separated.

“For right now, temporal and spatial separation is the best technique we have,” said Kevin Hurley, foundation conservation director.

Domestic sheep carry bacteria that triggers the disease and has led to bighorn die-offs and lingering illness in herds across the Western U.S. and Canada, with herds in Hells Canyon and the Salmon River canyon among them.

Wildlife managers have called for a policy of separation that essentially amounts to ending domestic sheep grazing on public land, when grazing allotments overlap wild sheep habitat.

But Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, tried to stop, or stall the plan through riders attached to federal spending bills. His first effort was turned away by a federal judge and just last week he attached a second rider to a fiscal 2013 bill that funds the Forest Service and other land management agencies.