In September 2025, Wilderness Watch filed an objection to a decision signed by the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest to continue domestic sheep grazing in critical bighorn sheep habitat in the High Uintas Wilderness in Utah. This nearly half-million-acre Wilderness protects Utah’s highest peaks, hundreds of lakes, and many species of wildlife. The Forest Service’s decision allows more than 10,000 domestic sheep and their lambs to graze on 10 allotments—including one which has not been grazed in more than 40 years—totaling about 144,000 acres in the High Uintas Wilderness.
Grazing is a compromise written into the 1964 Wilderness Act that is one of the more destructive activities allowed in Wilderness. A large concern about this plan is the possibility of the High Uintas Wilderness losing its bighorn sheep population, which could likely die out due to fatal diseases contracted from domestic sheep. Experience has shown bighorns die when domestic sheep occupy the same range.
Domestic sheep grazing in this Wilderness will continue to damage the wilderness character here in many other ways as well. The impacts include the trapping and killing of native predators ostensibly to protect domestic sheep; the destruction and loss of vegetation needed by other native species such as elk, moose, and deer; and the extensive damage to streams and wetlands. Due to these and other unacceptable impacts to the High Uintas Wilderness, we are asking the Forest Service to withdraw its decision and protect the High Uintas Wilderness and its wildlife by closing these allotments to domestic sheep grazing.
Photo: Ken Lund
