“I'm not sure what's going on this summer,” said Dave Landstrom. “But we're really seeing an increase in the number of people bringing dogs to the island.”
Landstrom manages state parks in northwest Montana for the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, parks that welcome, for the most part, pets on a leash. But not at Wild Horse.
And yet still the dogs run.
“A lot of people seem to be ignoring the rules,” said John Fraley, spokesman at FWP. “It's becoming a real problem out there.”
It's a problem, Landstrom said, because the sheep are, well, sheepish.
They look all tough and burly, what with those big curling horns and their reputation for crashing headbutts. But bighorn sheep are delicate. They're known to catch every disease that passes by, and they don't take stress well at all. You can scare a sheep to death, or run it to death, or if you're a dog, bark it to death.
“They do seem to be somewhat fragile,” Landstrom said. “They're sheep.”
So it worries him that the seasonal employee who boats out to patrol the island two or three days each week has reported more than 30 instances of dogs on the loose in the last few months.
“Visitation to the park seems pretty level,” Landstrom said, “so it's not like there are that many more people out there. We're not sure what's going on.”
Last week, a photograph made its way to Landstrom's desk. It shows a big happy dog looking out across the lake from Wild Horse. And it shows a bighorn sheep backed right to water's edge, with nowhere to run.
“Who knows how long that was going on before someone came along and took a picture?” he said. “Who knows where that chase started?”
And who knows if that sheep will survive the stress?
“He could get away from that dog only to die in two days from being run so hard,” Landstrom said.
The photograph landed on his desk as a citizen tip, a lead for wildlife officials to track down. The tipster, Landstrom said, reported watching from his boat as the dog chased the sheep for some time before reaching the shoreline, where the photograph was taken.
“It's a troubling picture,” Fraley agreed. “It really points to the problem on the island. It shows exactly why we don't allow pets on Wild Horse.”
Officials at FWP have not confirmed any dog-related deaths on the island, “but who knows,” Landstrom said. “Every year we find dead sheep and deer on that island. We can't patrol it that closely, and we certainly can't say dogs haven't caused some of those deaths.”
The 2,163-acre island is almost all state park, minus 50 or so acres of small private lots. It is managed, Landstrom said, like a wilderness or a national park - “as a natural park.”
Rumor has it someone floated the first bighorns out there in about 1939. To be sure, there were sheep on Wild Horse before 1947, when FWP biologists first bolstered the population with transplants of their own.
“They really took off,” Landstrom said. By the early 1970s, the herd had grown to around 300, far more than the island could sustain over time.
The state purchased the island as parkland in 1977, and almost immediately began thinning the sheep. More than 100 were captured in 1979, used as transplants to seed herds in other parts of the state. Since then, the Wild Horse bighorns have helped prop up or establish populations in every corner of Montana, making them a key source of genetic stock.
Biologists like to keep the Wild Horse bighorn population between 80 and 120 sheep, Landstrom said. Today, the population is bumping its head against the upper end of that range.
“Right now, we're beginning to eye the next transplant,” he said.
But first things first. Before he can worry about other bighorn populations, he must get a handle on the security of his seed stock, and that means putting a collar on the dogs.
He's been talking to the island's private landowners, has been meeting with them for years. They're a good bunch, Landstrom said, as committed as any to their four-footed neighbors.
Sure, sometimes they bring their dogs out to the summer cabin, but they're generally pretty careful about keeping a leash on things.
Unfortunately, not all visitors to the island are so vigilant.
Also unfortunate is the fact that the seasonal attendant is not authorized to write tickets; even if he can catch the dogs and track down the owners, Landstrom said, he still can't do much beyond giving them a good talking to.
A warden with a badge, though, could fine a pet owner $85, or as much as $535 if the dog was actually seen harassing wildlife.
But with scarce resources and all of northwest Montana to patrol, it's not surprising that very few such tickets are ever written. And with the way we love our pets, it's likewise not surprising that some visitors don't think much before boating Fido out to Wild Horse.
“It's hard to picture your family pet that way,” Landstrom said. “We think of them as gentle pets.
“But they're built to chase. Given the chance, they'll head out to the woods and play hunter for a day. The problem we have is it's an island, and there's nowhere to get away.”
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