Domestic sheep, imported labor

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has to go a long way to find sheepherders to tend its flock in Lincoln and White Pine counties.

The jobs are almost exclusively filled by men from Peru here on multiyear work visas. They generally speak Spanish and Quechua, the language of the Incas, so communication can be a challenge.

The water authority currently owns about 5,100 sheep. It sells them for meat or uses them to produce an industrial-grade wool, which gets blended with other fibers to make carpet, curtains and upholstery.

Zane Marshall, the authority’s director of resources and facilities, said it is required to advertise for sheepherders in the U.S. as well, “but more often than not we do not get any takers for these jobs.”

Only a handful of American workers have ever applied to herd sheep for the authority, and none of them stuck around after hearing the full job description.

It’s not a high-paying job, but SNWA ranch manager Bernard Petersen doesn’t think that’s the problem. It’s all the things you are expected to do: ride a horse, train your own sheepdogs, live alone for days on end in a tent or a small camp trailer.

“It’s the conditions. It’s the remoteness,” Petersen said.

Henry Brean Las Vegas Review-Journal

roughly 2 million water customers in Southern Nevada — have purchased a $141,000 hay cutter and about $1.1 million worth of tractors.

The ranch also sports a pair of new open-sided barns large enough to store up to 2,000 tons of hay in 1,300-pound bales stacked almost three stories high.

That’s the luxury of being backed by a public agency; Great Basin Ranch can afford things other operations can’t.

To help track its sheep and keep them out of nearby Great Basin National Park, a handful of ewes were fitted with satellite collars costing about $2,500 apiece.

Elsewhere, new fences have been put up, irrigation pipes replaced and water wells reconditioned so their pumps can run on solar power.

Petersen and company even went to the trouble of tidying up at the old properties the authority bought, which looked like family ranches sometimes do, each with its own ad-hoc junkyard filled with broken equipment and piles of scrap.

“We had salvagers come out and salvage the metal,” Petersen said. The rest was sent to a landfill — 35 tractor-trailers worth of trash and debris.

The ranch has also upgraded its livestock handling facilities to improve efficiency and reduce stress on the animals. Everything from the layout of the corrals to the design of the fences is meant to make them calmly go where the ranchers want them using techniques pioneered by Mary Temple Grandin, the renowned animal science professor and industry consultant on the humane treatment of livestock.

“I’ve actually been through several of her classes. I believe in her philosophy,” Petersen said. “You don’t have to prod and poke and beat on the animals. We use a gentle approach.”

Long trail ahead

Aside from the occasional dispute over a shared grazing allotment, Goicoechea said he doesn’t field many complaints anymore about the water authority’s ranching business.

“Most people have come to accept that’s how it’s going to be,” he said.

When he does hear grumbling, it usually has to do with the agency’s tax-exempt status or its seemingly bottomless well of cash for new equipment, salaries and employee benefits.

“They have some advantages there. It’s a nice place to work compared to your average ranch,” Goicoechea said. “If you come up $10,000 short on your bills, it’s nice to have your ratepayers pick that up.”

But as Marshall points out, the authority has one major responsibility other ranchers don’t: “We’re also tasked with providing water to 2 million people and 41 million visitors,” he said.

The SNWA’s water resource plan for the next 50 years still includes groundwater pumped south from Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys in Lincoln County and Spring Valley in White Pine County. Though conservation and the Great Recession eased some of the urgency, authority officials insist they still need to build the pipeline someday.

Current projections suggest the water won’t be needed in the Las Vegas Valley until 2035 at the earliest.

Assuming the authority gets the state and federal permits it needs for the pipeline and the water to fill it, construction of the roughly $15 billion project is expected to take a decade or more.

By then, Petersen should have his cattle herd just the way he wants it.