Scientists say the population of endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep appears to have stabilized after suffering devastating losses during the record-breaking winter of 2022-2023.
Tom Stephenson, who leads the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Recovery Program, said the number of ewes, or female sheep, counted this summer is about the same as the previous summer.
Plus, he said, the abundant summer forage helped produce a “good crop” of new lambs — almost 100. And at least some ewes, which are critical for population growth, were spotted in herds that researchers previously feared might have been wiped out.
“Very small numbers,” Stephenson said of those herds. “Nevertheless, even if these populations hang on with a small number of animals, there’s a chance they can rebuild.”
Stephenson estimates the current total population of Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep at between 380 and 400 animals.
Tom Stephenson heads the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Recovery Program.
Bernd Zeugswetter
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LAist
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Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep are well-adapted to snowy winters at high altitudes, Stephenson said. But several above-average snow years over the past decade have seriously hampered the species’ recovery.
In the summer of 2023, researchers found that half of the bighorn sheep that were being tracked had died in the previous winter. Most were victims of avalanches, starvation, or mountain lions.
Even with new lambs born that summer, the population dropped by 40%.
But this past winter, the snowpack was average, which “for bighorn sheep isn’t bad,” Stephenson said. “They’re well adapted to a good amount of snow.”
Still, overall the population of Sierra Nevada bighorn is about half what it was at the peak of the recovery program, in 2016.
Before European settlers arrived in the 1700s and 1800s, thousands of bighorn sheep are thought to have occupied the Sierra Nevada, from the Yosemite region south to Mount Whitney and the high slopes of Sequoia National Park.
Domestic sheep brought by Europeans passed on disease to the native bighorns, which had no immunity. By the mid-1990s, there were only about 100 Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep left.
Conservationists ramped up efforts to save the species, and they were listed as endangered by the state and federal government in 1999.
A ewe from the Wheeler Ridge herd southwest of Bishop.
Bernd Zeugswetter
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LAist
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Two major factors affecting the Sierra Nevada bighorn recovery are climate and predation by mountain lions. As the climate changes, the Sierra Nevada is expected to experience less snow, on average, but also more intense storms.
Both extremes are problematic for the sheep: too much snow means it’s harder for the animals to find food and more likely they’ll get trapped in avalanches, or move to lower elevations where they’re more vulnerable to becoming a mountain lion’s meal.
Too little snow produces less fodder in the summer to feed new lambs and fatten up their parents to withstand the next winter.
Rather than fret about the unpredictable weather, Stephenson said he’s more focused on the other threat — mountain lions. “When it comes to lion management, we do have an ability to influence that,” he said.
In the early years of the recovery program, mountain lions known to target bighorn sheep were regularly euthanized. That approach became politically unpopular — mountain lions are beloved in California — and the program has since shifted toward relocating lions that prey on bighorns to areas outside of the recovery zones.
But the process of getting permission to relocate a mountain lion can be cumbersome, Stephenson said. “If we could take those actions as soon as we see a threat, that would be a huge benefit to the [bighorn] population,” he said.
If you’ve been driving up Boulder Street in Nevada City, you may have noticed the construction of a new building on the property that facilitates Nevada City Public Works.
“This is a replacement of the storage building that collapsed in the storm of (2021). We are replacing a building that was here,” said Mark Tintle of MK & Sons Construction, who was hired by the city to replace the fallen structure.
Gov. Joe Lombardo’s proposal for addressing Nevada’s affordable housing crisis includes down payment and rental assistance for working families and incentives for homebuilders, the Republican governor said Monday.
His legislation, called the Nevada Housing Access and Attainability Act, would create the Nevada Attainable Housing Fund and put forward $250 million in state resources to support more than $1 billion in housing through grants, loans and rebates.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Lombardo said the first of his five priority pieces of legislation came out of the concerns constituents have about the future of Nevada’s housing market.
“I think it is the governor’s role to engage in that,” he said in his office near Harry Reid International Airport. “If we have the ability to incentivize or abate or provide, we need to be in the business. That’s what the intent of that act is.”
The governor’s bill text was not available Monday evening but is expected to be published soon. Other bills on education, health, crime and economic development are also pending. The bills received exemptions that allow them to be introduced after Monday’s deadline for most other legislation considered this legislative session.
Lombardo proposes expanding affordable housing eligibility to households earning up to 150 percent of the area median income. He said another incentive program would address low-income earners making 60 percent of the area median income.
Clark County’s median household income is $73,845, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The 150-percent ceiling is intended to help Nevada’s workforce, including teachers and first responders, and the fund will help families cover down payments or rent, Lombardo said.
Lombardo’s bill would also create a council to provide oversight of the Nevada Attainable Housing Fund.
Local agencies to ID recipients
Under the legislation, the state would match local grant funds from local agencies, according to Lombardo.
“It’s a little bit easier to identify the people in need at the local level versus the state level, and so they could do all that due diligence, and we can provide matching funds to address that,” the governor said.
His bill also aims to provide incentives to homebuilders through the Nevada State Infrastructure Bank and low-interest loans, he said.
Attainable housing projects funded through the Nevada Attainable Housing Fund would be exempt from prevailing wage requirements, which are the minimum hourly rate that workers must be paid in public works projects.
The prevailing wage varies by region in Nevada and job. A cement mason in Clark County, for instance, receives a prevailing hourly wage of $68.81, according to a report from the State of Nevada Department of Business & Industry Office of the Labor Commissioner.
Lombardo’s bill includes a preference but not a requirement for paying prevailing wages, in an effort to encourage fair labor practices while maintaining cost efficiency and give flexibility for developers, according to the governor’s office.
It also calls for expedited review and permitting processes for attainable housing projects, as well as streamlining the approval of contractors’ licenses in rural areas, according to the governor’s office.
His proposal is just one of the housing-related bills on the table this session, as legislators try to find solutions to a longstanding housing crisis that has plagued the Silver State.
Las Vegas Valley residents face an affordable housing crisis caused by elevated interest rates, a slowdown in building, a lack of buildable land and increased construction and labor costs.
Nevada is short more than 78,000 affordable rental units, and the urban area is landlocked with 88 percent of Clark County controlled by the federal government.
Legislative Democrats have re-introduced bills the governor vetoed last session, including authorizing rent control for seniors and those with disabilities, and putting limits on land purchases by out-of-state corporations.
“Under Joe Lombardo, Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the nation and its ongoing housing crisis is leading to skyrocketing eviction rates and homelessness,” Tai Sims, communications director for the Nevada State Democratic Party, said in a statement. “Despite this, Joe Lombardo still refuses to offer a plan that holds large corporate investors accountable and limits their ability to buy up housing stock and artificially increase costs, leaving everyday Nevadans with little to no affordable options. The cost to buy a home is now at record highs in Nevada, but when Joe Lombardo had the opportunity to sign legislation that would lower rent costs and keep more Nevadans in their homes, he vetoed the bills. He owns Nevada’s housing crisis.”
Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com and McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah and @mckenna_ross_ on X.
From Watts v. KOS Media LLC, decided Tuesday by the Nevada Court of Appeals (Chief Judge Bonnie Bulla, joined by Judges Michael Gibbons and Deborah Westbrook):
Watts sued respondent KOS Media LLC, alleging that it was liable under NRS 41.1347 (Nevada’s anti-doxing statute) for posting and/or facilitating the posting of an article that allegedly contained Watts’ personal identifying information on its website “The Daily KOS.” The post, entitled: “Heartland Fundraising for Tony Watts’ $2,000 Thermometers to Compete with Global Temp Network,” was made by a user named “ClimateDenierRoundup” and contained links to the Zillow listing for Watts’ Nevada residence, as well as its location on Google Maps.
Watts alleged that, due to his status as a well-known climate pundit, the release of his address on the internet increased his risk of death or bodily injury by climate activists, allowing him to recover damages and reasonable attorney fees and costs. Watts later filed a first amended complaint, which included alternative allegations that KOS either posted the article itself through an employee, or “aided and abetted” a third party in creating the article and knew that it contained personal and potentially harmful information prior to posting….
The trial court dismissed this claim, “under NRS 41.1347(6), which provides that ‘[t]his section must not be construed to impose liability on any interactive computer service for any content provided by another person,’” but the appellate court concluded this was premature:
While Watts did include allegations in his complaint that indicated KOS aided and abetted a third party in posting the article; he also included an alternative theory, namely that “an individual associated with or employed by KOS Media LLC, and not a third party posted the content” alongside several other references noting that KOS “created” or “supplied” the content that disseminated his personal identifying information. Further, Watts’ complaint also includes allegations that the disclaimer on the KOS website {“[t]his content is not subject to review by Daily KOS staff prior to publication”} is incorrect, and that “KOS staff has reviewed the subject posting prior to publication and/or after, calling the disclaimer into question.”
Because this alternative theory of liability posits that KOS itself, not a third party, disseminated Watts’ personal identifying information, we conclude the district court erred when it determined that KOS is entitled to statutory immunity under NRS 41.1347(6) at this stage of the process. When treating this allegation as true, KOS fails to demonstrate that the content at issue here was “provided by another person” as required for immunity under the statute.
The court therefore allowed the case to go forward (though of course ultimately KOS might well prevail, for instance if the post was indeed put up by an unrelated third party).
The Nevada doxing statute allows lawsuit by one person against some “other person” when
(a) The other person disseminates any personal identifying information or sensitive information [defined as sexual orientation, transgender status, or HIV status] of the person without the consent of the person, knowing that the person could be identified by such information:
(1) With the intent to aid, assist, encourage, facilitate, further or promote any criminal offense which would be reasonably likely to cause death, bodily injury or stalking; or
(2) With the intent to cause harm to the person and with knowledge of or reckless disregard for the reasonable likelihood that the dissemination of the information may cause death, bodily injury or stalking; and
(b) The dissemination of the personal identifying information or sensitive information:
(1) Would cause a reasonable person to fear the death, bodily injury or stalking of himself or herself or a close relation; or
(2) Causes the death, bodily injury or stalking of the person whose information was disseminated or a close relation of the person.
It also provides exceptions for dissemination:
(a) For the purposes of reporting conduct reasonably believed to be unlawful;
(b) Which depicts a law enforcement officer acting under the color of law or an elected officer of the State of Nevada or any of its political subdivisions acting in an official capacity;
(c) Gathered in the exercise of the constitutionally protected rights of freedom of speech and assembly; or
(d) Which is a good faith communication in furtherance of the right to petition or the right to free speech in direct connection with an issue of public concern[, meaning] {
- Communication that is aimed at procuring any governmental or electoral action, result or outcome;
- Communication of information or a complaint to a Legislator, officer or employee of the Federal Government, this state or a political subdivision of this state, regarding a matter reasonably of concern to the respective governmental entity;
- Written or oral statement made in direct connection with an issue under consideration by a legislative, executive or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law; or
- Communication made in direct connection with an issue of public interest in a place open to the public or in a public forum,
- which is truthful or is made without knowledge of its falsehood.}
I think there are good arguments that statutes such as this are unconstitutionally overbroad and vague, but in this appeal KOS Media only raised the service provider immunity argument.
Jeffrey Dickerson represents Watts.
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