Interior, Agriculture Secretaries Order Eagle Relocations to Shield Wyoming Lamb Flocks
Why It Matters
Wyoming sheep producers have long battled golden eagle predation during lambing season, and the conflict has now risen to the highest levels of the federal government. Cabinet-level intervention signals growing pressure to find practical, near-term relief for woolgrowers facing real economic losses on Wyoming rangelands.
What Happened
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins jointly directed federal wildlife officials early this year to take immediate action during the 2026 lambing season to reduce golden eagle attacks on domestic sheep. The directive, delivered in February, filtered down to researchers at the USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center.
USDA research biologist Lindsey Perry briefed members of Wyoming’s Animal Damage Management Board on Wednesday, explaining that the cabinet-level order redirected her team’s resources toward capturing golden eagles in areas where lambing sheep graze and translocating them elsewhere. The goal, she said, is to break the birds’ hunting patterns and reduce pressure on newborn lambs.
“They asked us to try to do something,” Perry told board members, summarizing the directive from Burgum and Rollins.
Relocation, however, has proven complicated. Golden eagles tend to return to familiar territory, sometimes within a year or less. Officials aimed to move captured Wyoming birds toward the Pacific Coast — far enough that mountain ranges would discourage their return — but no other states have agreed to accept them. Neighboring livestock producers in potential destination states expressed concern that incoming eagles would simply shift the predation problem onto their own operations.
Animal Damage Management Board member Sharon O’Toole summed up the reluctance bluntly: “If I was a livestock producer in that area, I wouldn’t want the eagles turned loose.” Perry confirmed that receiving-state officials shared that concern.
By the Numbers
- Wyoming’s golden eagle population has declined by nearly a third over the past 20 years, according to Teton Raptor Center conservation director Bryan Bedrosian.
- Wyoming hosts an estimated one-quarter of the breeding population of golden eagles in the western United States.
- The state also hosts roughly half of the migratory eagles that travel south from Alaska and Canada each year.
- USDA Wildlife Services reported zero golden eagle hazing incidents from 2016 to 2018; by 2020, that number had climbed to 19 hazing events.
- Nonlethal deterrent testing, originally planned sooner, has been pushed back to 2028 and 2029 due to the diversion of personnel toward relocation efforts.
Legal and Conservation Complications
Federal law tightly limits options for dealing with golden eagles. The Bald Eagle Protection Act, amended in 1962 to include golden eagles, prohibits most forms of capture, possession, or killing of the birds. That legal framework means lethal control is largely off the table, leaving relocation and nonlethal deterrents as the primary tools available to wildlife managers.
At the same time, the species faces mounting population pressures. Habitat loss, lead poisoning from spent ammunition in carcasses, and wind turbine strikes have all contributed to declining numbers. Bedrosian, speaking to the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission last fall, described Wyoming’s outsized role in the bird’s survival: “Wyoming is to golden eagles as Wyoming is to sage grouse.”
That dual reality — a federally protected species in population decline, simultaneously in escalating conflict with one of Wyoming’s most tradition-rooted agricultural sectors — leaves policymakers navigating a narrow path.
What’s Next
Federal wildlife officials will continue attempting to identify willing recipient states for relocated Wyoming eagles during the 2026 and 2027 seasons. The nonlethal deterrent research project, which could eventually offer woolgrowers a cost-effective, long-term solution, is now scheduled to begin field testing in 2028. Until then, Wyoming sheep producers and federal managers are left managing the conflict one lambing season at a time.
For woolgrowers already navigating rising operational costs — including recent rate increase requests from Rocky Mountain Power that add to Wyoming producers’ overhead — the delay in permanent solutions adds further economic uncertainty to an already challenging livestock environment.
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