BACKGROUND
Hi. I’m Tristan Howard. In an effort to earn a Master of Science in Geography at the University of Montana in Missoula, for my thesis project, I researched the efficacy of wild-domestic sheep interaction policies in bighorn disease outbreak locations in the western United States. In the middle stages of my research, I never found a comprehensive site covering the very topical and significant wild-domestic sheep disease problem. So, I decided to share some of my findings to make important information more accessible to interested parties. As part of my study design, I primarily examined information published/released from 1990-2012. However, this site includes additional information from 2012-2015.
PURPOSE & ORGANIZATION
I designed this site to present reputable information resources covering the problem of disease transmission from domestic sheep to bighorns. This is a big, important topic, and I felt strongly that my grad school research should be shared.
I feel fortunate that shis site has been accomplishing its purpose. Since its launch, I have been contacted by site visitors that include wildlife biologists and journalists. Distribution of important information via this site has been happening, which is great.
The background items are my writings and are culled from my thesis and/or expand upon it. Most of the remaining menu buttons link to outside info. Information resources are organized by categories listed in the menu bar at left. Some overlap occurs. Each narrative I wrote has its own reference list, and the menu bar has links to bibliographies and a page listing all references for the entire site.
This site provides a great deal of information on bighorns themselves in addition to information on the disease problems they face. Here, you will also information on the challenges the domestic sheep industry faces because of bighorns.
INFORMATION ACCESSIBILITY
I posted PDF documents for files that were publicly available online via government websites or the transactions of the Northern Wild Sheep & Goat Council and Desert Bighorn Council. Scientific journal article citations link to abstracts or full PDFs. For example, all cited articles from the Journal of Wildlife Diseases are available online for free. This site houses over 140 PDF documents and links to numerous sources of online content not hosted here.
IMAGERY & RESPONSIBLE PARTIES
Most photos on this site came from government agencies’ public domain image libraries. Agency biologists provided the free-range interaction photos. If you have access to other interaction images, feel free to share info, files, or permissions, so the gallery can be expanded.
This site is my own independent project. I have not sought or received outside funding for it or endorsement from the University of Montana. Also, Altervista is merely a website hosting company that allows me to maintain the site for free.
I can be reached at tristan_howard@outlook.com.
BANNER IMAGES: Color domestic sheep (Natural Resources Conservation Service), bighorn ram (Dean Biggins, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service), black-and-white domestic sheep (Bureau of Land Management)