British Columbia’s spectrum of enticing landscapes has long drawn those with a pioneering spirit. Both the driven and the dreamers, those seeking something and those trying to escape something else, have discovered the province’s diversity and opportunity to be an irresistible attraction.

Dennis Loxton probably slots most comfortably into a subset of the driven category. He’s spent 50 years working in B.C.’s silviculture sector, with the last 26 of them pioneering the use of sheep in vegetation management in the province. Now he’s completing the circle and is returning to his home in the state of South Australia.

The introduction of sheep as a useful tool in protecting newly planted conifer seedlings from competition from faster growing invasive species has at times received a rough ride for acceptance in B.C.

“I remember the time I was after a vegetation management contract at the forest ministry office in Williams Lake. The staff there just burst out laughing at me when I told them I planned to use hundreds of sheep to control the weeds,” recalls Loxton with a smile. He was used to that type of reaction.

But now the voracious woolly grazers are once again being treated with more understanding. Sheep grazing is now becoming acknowledged as an effective and much more environmentally friendly tool than spraying harmful and indiscriminate pesticides across the landscape.

Sheep have always earned more respect in Loxton’s native Australia. They’ve become part of the country’s folklore. Sprawling isolated sheep stations have helped string together the dusty expanses of the Outback.

A mystique has grown around the sheep stations and the people living on them.

In Australia, Loxton landed a job as a wool classifier. It involved travelling across the Outback with sheep shearing crews. Loxton notes with a grin that the crew’s reputation for working and playing hard was well earned.

A drought helped change Loxton’s career path. There were dead sheep everywhere, he remembers. “I needed a change of scenery until the rains came back.”

Shepherd Dennis Loxton and Agnes Thomas show a photo of a sheep brushing operation, a chemical-free method of reducing herbaceous competition for crop conifer trees.

It turned out to be quite the interval. Europe was his original change-of-scene objective. But he ended up first in Vancouver and then north to the Queen Charlotte Islands, now known as Haida Gwaii.

“Everything seemed huge; the mountains, the trees and even the loggers scrambling through the undergrowth to set the chokers.” He learned first hand just how tough that job was.

But Loxton’s destiny lay further inland. And in 1974 he began his half-century long career first as a tree planting contractor before switching gears into sheep vegetation management work. During the former career path, he would hire up to 200 tree planters each year and during the latter activity shepherd up to 6,000 sheep during each summer long season. “We have always worked way out in the boonies and we have taken more sheep further out into the bush than anybody in Canadian history,” reckons Loxton.

But wherever he worked in B.C., there were two essential planks supporting his management strategy: people and dogs. Loxton learned during his tree planting contractor days that B.C.’s university athletic programs were rich ground to recruit silvicultural workers. The young people studying there were healthy—essential for a productive tree planter—and “they proved to be very hard workers”.

Trained dogs were essential members of the sheep vegetation management team. They fell into two categories, herders to keep the sheep in tight formation when on the move and contained as they demolished weeds. “Sheep don’t eat trees,” reminds Loxton. The second category, guardian dogs, are essential to keep the sheep and the shepherds safe.

Loxton’s sheep herding operation spent time working in the Stewart area of northwestern B.C. The region is sparsely populated by people but supports healthy populations of grizzly bears, black bears and roaming packs of timber wolves. All of which are opportunistic feeders willing to sample mutton. The wildlife populations of the area prompted a re-think. “We increased the guardian dog pack to eight dogs per 1,500-sheep flock.”

Guardian dog availability in Canada includes the Great Pyrenees—Loxton’s favourite—originating in France, the Kuvasz from Hungary and the Italian Maremma. Australian Kelpies and Border Collies are among the herd dog species commonly used.

Loxton was pleasantly surprised to discover he could source the working dogs he needed in Canada. The rural Hutterite communities in southern Alberta were a good source and had a long history of successful sheep husbandry.

Loxton launched his “rent-a-dog” business taking the dogs out into the bush to work for the summer and returning them in the fall. He later bred his own dogs. The dogs instinctively knew what to do—and not do—around sheep. Not so true with all the would-be shepherds “We had a very rigid 30-day shepherd training regime,” he reports. “And it worked.”

The day-to-day summer work routine for shepherds, their flocks and dogs was long and repetitive. On occasion, Loxton would mix things up a little. Like asking the shepherdesses to don evening dresses for the day’s work. It was surprising enough for the occasional logging truck driver to encounter a flock of sheep by the road miles from anywhere. But smiling female shepherds in evening gowns in the middle of nowhere…? The driver’s radio exchanges would have been interesting.

But Loxton’s silliness helped brighten the routine and elevate the mood in camp.

But much later, the familiar routine was destined to be altogether shattered rather than momentarily brightened. B.C.’s biggest forest companies had the ear of the government of the day.  And they used their influence. “The big companies said no more,” said Loxton.

Overnight, sheep grazing was effectively outlawed as a control for unwanted weeds. Spraying herbicides was the big forest companies’ most cost-effective way to help out the coniferous seedlings during a critical time in their development.

But the big companies’ decision also wiped out Loxton’s business and holdings. “Right there we were bankrupt,” he says.

There were other less dramatic side effects from the spraying of chemicals on the landscape. Most of them took longer to manifest themselves. First Nations communities blamed the spraying program for chasing moose away from their traditional territories. And they claimed spray was leaching from the ground into the streams and rivers, affecting the salmon habitat and a traditional food source.

Apart from killing unwanted weed species, spraying is indiscriminate. It can also take out hardwoods like birch, aspen and cottonwood. They have a commercial value in their own right to a growing sector of the wood product manufacturing industry. Hardwoods also play an essential role by contributing to the natural diversity of the forest environment, and have an additional and important function in inhibiting wildfire spread and behaviour.

Loxton believes those factors will help turn the tide against spraying.

“It will take time and it will be led by environmentalists and First Nations,” he predicts, but he is confident the pendulum will swing back. It already is to a degree. A “Stop the Spray” campaign is active in B.C. and gaining momentum. Loxton participated in a recent spraying protest demonstration in Prince George.

“I believe sheep farming has a future all over B.C., including the use of sheep to graze plantations,” he declares.

Loxton figures sheep will also become appreciated for other values they contribute. These include their valuable wool and their nutritious meat, especially during times when there’s a renewed interest in food self-sufficiency in B.C. and across Canada.

Loxton offers an additional and long-held recommendation resulting from his experiences in the bush. “I believe that nobody should be asked to work in the forests of B.C. without a guardian dog and that livestock guardian dogs should be accepted as a standard silvicultural tool on all B.C. reforestation projects.”