On December 6, 2001, with economic assistance from Defenders of Wildlife and the Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society's Memorial Bear Fund, the Dick Egbert Sheep Company waived its grazing permit for the Badger-Jackpine Sheep and Goat Grazing Allotment. In return, the company was issued a grazing permit for the High Point Grazing Allotment on the Ashton/Island Park Ranger District in Idaho.

The Badger-Jackpine Grazing Allotment is within the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Recovery area and has been a location of conflict between grizzly bears and domestic sheep.

With the Dick Egbert Sheep Company waiving its Badger-Jackpine allotment, all domestic sheep grazing has been removed from the grizzly bear recovery zone along the Teton Front. The removal meets the goal outlined in the 1997 Revised Forest Plan for the Targhee National Forest to phase out sheep grazing within the grizzly bear recovery area on an opportunity basis.

The Memorial Bear Fund was established by the Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society in 1991, following an airplane crash which took the lives of pilot Ray Austin and Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologists Kirk Inberg and Kevin Roy, while radio tracking a grizzly bear. Tragically, in October 1995, another airplane crash while tracking grizzlies took the life of pilot Fred Reed of Alta, Wyoming. According to Memorial Bear Fund administrators Bill Rudd and Tom Christiansen of Green River, "The Bear Fund is our way of honoring the memory of Fred, Ray, Kirk and Kevin, guys who made the ultimate sacrifice for an animal each cared for deeply, the grizzly bears of the Yellowstone Ecosystem." On December 20, 2001, a similar grazing allotment transfer was completed with economic assistance from the Wyoming and Minnesota/Wisconsin chapters of the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep and the Memorial Bear Fund.

In this agreement, Dick Egbert Sheep Company waived its grazing permit for the Mill Creek-Table Rock grazing allotment. In return, it was issued a grazing permit on the Big Bend Ridge grazing allotment to the west on the Ashton/Island Park Ranger District.

This agreement provided additional progress toward the goal in the 1997 Revised Forest Plan for the Targhee National Forest to phase out domestic sheep grazing on an opportunity basis within bighorn sheep habitat along the Teton Front. This goal was included to eliminate the possibility of disease transmission from domestic sheep to bighorn sheep.

The Wyoming chapter of FNAWS worked for over two years with the Egbert Sheep Company to resolve a potential problem for the bighorn sheep population. Wyoming FNAWS past president Jim Collins, who led the negotiations said, "It is extremely important to Wyoming FNAWS that any agreements like this must work for the grazing permittee and they must be done cooperatively. The Egberts have been great to work with, and we hope this will work out for everyone."

This is the second agreement of this type facilitated by FNAWS in the Teton Range. In May 2001, Wyoming, Eastern and Minnesota/Wisconsin FNAWS chapters provided economic assistance to Ball Brothers Sheep Company to acquire domestic sheep grazing permits on the Soda Springs Ranger District, on the C-T National Forest. In turn, Ball Brothers Sheep Company waived the Green Mountain allotment on the Teton Basin Ranger District back to the Forest Service.