Then there’s what George Johnson did to Arizona’s largest herd of bighorn sheep – owned by the citizens of Arizona – and the horrible suspicion that it wasn’t an “oops” mistake.
 The state’s lawsuit lays it out in dry, legal terms: “Upon information and belief, during August–December 2003, Defendants caused between four and five thousand domestic goats to be located on the La Osa Project…. At all times relevant hereto, Defendants knew or should have known that there was a herd of desert bighorn sheep that ranged in or around the Silver Bell Mountains, southwest of the La Osa range. Defendants further knew or should have known that domestic goats can directly transfer certain diseases to desert bighorn sheep.”
Johnson knew all of this, the suit contends, because the grazing lease he had with the state of Arizona specifically states: “To protect desert bighorn sheep: No domestic sheep or goat grazing will be authorized on public lands within nine miles surrounding desert bighorn sheep habitat.”
The La Osa range is within nine miles of the Silver Bell Herd, the suit notes.
Brian Dolan, the president of the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society, remembers a more horrifying version of what happened when George Johnson decided to “raise goats” on the “ranch” he was trying to develop into thousands of houses.
“He brought in several hundred diseased domestic goats from Texas and put them in a private pasture near Ironwood,” Dolan recalls. He says Johnson had barbed-wire fence that was inadequate – it was meant for cattle, not goats. Several hundred diseased goats escaped and trespassed into lands managed by the state and federal Bureau of Land Management.
“They infected the bighorn with two diseases,” he says. “One caused temporary or permanent blindness. The other was a viral disease that creates open sores. A number of bighorns died, probably one-fourth or one–third of the herd [an estimate of 75 to 100 animals overall]. I saw some pretty disturbing video of blinded sheep running head-on into saguaro cactus. It was like watching sheep commit hari-kari.”
Dolan says it took two months of complaining about the goats getting out of the flimsy pens before anything was done. Johnson told him he was sending out “cowboys” to round up the goats, but they weren’t getting rounded up. Dolan says he regularly called the BLM, Game and Fish, and Johnson with his concerns.
“It was so frustrating to me,” Dolan says. “The whole time everybody thought it would go away. Finally, even Johnson himself realized the problem and said, ‘go out and shoot them.’ It took six to eight weeks to kill all the goats.”
By then, the infections had set in and sheep were dying. “It was just unbelievable,” Dolan says.
Game and Fish officials arrived in helicopters, trying to land on the rugged mountains to get vaccines to the sick bighorns. “It was at great expense and a great difficulty,” Dolan adds. “One guy broke his hand. They had to jump out of the helicopters to get to the sheep. It was pretty difficult.”
In all, the state charges, despite their efforts to provide medical care, at least 49 sheep suffered “serious symptoms” including blindness, scabbing and bleeding of the mouth. At least 21 died “from malnutrition, falling from the steep terrain or the inability to evade predators.”
Environmentalist Carolyn Campbell says she got very suspicious about those goats when Johnson was warned that the bighorn sheep herd near his land was “an issue” in considering his proposed development. She remembers this: “Mr. Johnson said, ‘Don’t worry about the bighorn sheep, they will not be an issue.’ What does that mean? I have to think this wasn’t a whole series of accidental ‘oops.’”