Sheep Industry News September 2023

separate bills in the Legislature last year that Jim was instru mental in [drafting] to help correct a lot of the issues.” Four of those bills were routed through the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee, and every one of them is now state law. From his family’s ranchland along the west slope of the Wind River Range, Magagna told WyoFile that he doesn’t like to think of himself as the powerful face of the livestock industry, but he conceded that he gets a lot of attention. “I’ve been at it for so long, everybody knows me,” Magag na said. “They don’t always agree with me, but they’re usually willing to listen.” Although Magagna has helped buoy the clout of an indus try that has declined significantly as a portion of Wyoming’s gross domestic product as the decades have lapsed, he points out that its might is not what it once was. “It’s never going to be what it was back in the 1880s, when we ran the state,” Magagna said. “But I think we’re in a good place today.” Magagna – who is of Italian and Slovenian descent – has a somewhat unconventional life arc for a Wyoming sheep rancher. On little more than a whim – a friend was applying, so he did, too – he took off to Indiana to earn an undergrad uate degree in business administration from the University of Notre Dame. “My parents took me on the train to South Bend,” Magag na said, “and that was the first time I’d ever been east of Cheyenne.” His heart wanted to take over the family business back in Wyoming, but he didn’t pass up a chance at law school after logging a stellar LSAT score and being admitted to Stanford. “I didn’t want to be a lawyer,” Magagna said, “but I fig ured if I failed and went broke as a rancher I’d have a career fallback.” Magagna never did practice law. Instead, he built up his family’s business. Longtime friend and fellow wool grower Mary Thoman recalled Magagna’s ambition as a young rancher. “He said he wanted to be the biggest sheep rancher in Wyoming,” Thoman said, “but then he decided to go to Cheyenne to do politics.” Around the turn of the century, Magagna ran in the realm of 8,000 sheep, which was “one of the largest if not the larg est” operation remaining in Wyoming, he said. Magagna doesn’t run his own commercial flock anymore, but leases his land out to other sheep ranchers who’ve stayed in the game. On July 3, he was at his property overlooking Lander Creek helping Thoman’s sister, Kristy Wardell, unload about 750 lambs and ewes that had been trucked in from Fremont County.

Sheep-moving operations, like the industry, have changed dramatically. In the old days, he said, they’d trail much larger flocks on foot to the same pasture before moving up to more mountainous grazing allotments in the Bridger-Teton Na tional Forest. “There’s just not the sheep there used to be here,” Magagna said. “In the 1940s, there were more sheep in Wyoming than there are today in the United States.” Wyoming’s domestic sheep numbers, he said, have shrunk from 6-plus million to a few hundred thousand during that span. Numbers of smaller supplementary farm flocks, how ever, are increasing. And Magagna’s contributing to that dynamic. He’s kept a small flock, which last numbered 17. Essentially, Thoman said, he’s held onto those animals as a hobby for a good friend and business partner of his, Jose Rodriguez. When Magagna bowed out of commercially running sheep a couple decades ago, some of his allotments were bought out by conservation buyers interested in seeing the range recover. Later, he led an effort to get Bridger-Teton officials to consider restocking bought-out allotments, which critics worried could collapse future interest in the conservation tactic. “If that’s not hypocrisy,” Ratner said, “I don’t know what is.” Ratner’s former employer – Western Watersheds Project – has come to blows with Magagna and the Wyoming Stock Growers repeatedly. Eight years ago, Magagna and others asked the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality to remove three streams listed as “impaired” from potentially hazardous levels of E. coli bacteria. Their rationale was that the problematic water samples came from Ratner — and the state agency obliged. By Western Watersheds Project director Erik Molvar’s count, Magagna and the Wyoming Stock Growers have intervened in at least eight lawsuits the Hailey, Idaho-based nonprofit has initiated since 2006. The vast majority of the time, he said, like with the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Ap peals’ recent ruling over grizzly conflict in the Upper Green River drainage, the intervenors came out on the losing end. In the statehouse, however, the stock growers bat at a high clip. No doubt it’s due in good part to Magagna. Senate Presi dent Ogden Driskill (Devil’s Tower, Wyo.) and Speaker of the House, Albert Sommers (Pinedale, Wyo.) – both cattlemen – praised the longtime lobbyist. “He’s non-traditional in some ways,” Driskill said, “in that he’s a sheep guy in a cow organization.” In his time at the wool growers and stock growers, Magagna “reached across boundaries” and helped modern ize trade groups that were “really stodgy and staunch” in

September 2023 • Sheep Industry News • 17