Disease & Separation

Movi is a pathogen that can be carried by domestic sheep and transferred by animal-to-animal contact with wild sheep. Movi weakens a wild sheep's immune system, making them susceptible to death by pneumonia. Young lambs are most vulnerable once Movi is introduced to a herd, but all-age die-offs often occur within a population.
 
There is no cure or vaccination for Movi. At present, the best preventive measure is keeping the ranges of wild and domestic sheep from overlapping to reduce the risk of contact. Improved lamb survival has been demonstrated by removing Movi-infected bighorn sheep from a population to stop the pathogen from being continuously transferred to non-infected sheep. Areas with little to no lamb survival each spring are now seeing lambs making it past 6 months, but more data over longer timeframes is essential.

Doctors, farmers, biologists, and volunteers come together to fight a deadly disease threatening both wild and domestic sheep in a feature documentary, Transmission,  presented by the Wild Sheep Society of BC. Learn more at www.movifree.org.

Dr. Tom Besser was appointed January 1, 2016, to a 3-year term as the WSF Rocky Crate Chair for Wild Sheep Disease Research at Washington State University. Dr. Besser's focus is on Movi. Dr. Besser's research generated additional information and data to aid wild sheep managers in their efforts to improve chronically-poor lamb survival and recruitment, and to work toward effective spatial and temporal separation between domestic sheep and goats and wild sheep. In 2021, Dr. Kate Huyvaert was named Besser's successor as the Rocky Crate DVM & Wild Sheep Foundation Endowed Chair.

Dr. Huyvaert comes to WSU from the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University, where she was on the faculty since 2007. Her love of nature and the outdoors emerged from hours spent exploring the creek behind her grandparents’ house where she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She earned undergraduate degrees in English and Biology, an MSc in Biology at Wake Forest University, and a PhD in Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2004. After graduate school, Kate worked with the CDC and USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center to broaden her perspective and deepen her skillset in vector-borne zoonotic diseases and diseases at the wildlife-domestic animal interface.

For decades, WSF and our network of Chapters and Affiliates have advocated for effective temporal and spatial separation between wild sheep and domestic sheep and/or goats. WSF has: 

• Advocated for and partnered on dozens of voluntary domestic sheep grazing allotment waivers in multiple states. WSF has engaged the domestic sheep industry and individual permittees, seeking collaboration and trying to improve relationship-building and common understanding. 
• Worked hard with federal and Crown land management agencies, state, provincial, and federal wild sheep managers and respective legislatures, our strong network of Chapter and Affiliate leaders, and others to craft long-term solutions designed to achieve and maintain effective separation in time and space.
• Provided funding through its Grant-in-aid Program for continued disease research and surveillance and Test & Remove projects.