Why Washington Mountain Goats Are Being Flown From One National Park to Another

[Judi Lynn]

Olympic National Park’s mountain goats are moving to saltier pastures
By Jason Daley
smithsonian.com
2 hours ago

Mountain goats at Olympic National Park have a tendency to get a little too close for comfort; they are known to follow hikers around in hopes of getting a salty lick from their sweat, urine or food. That’s because the Washington mountain range doesn’t have many natural salt licks which the animals rely on. In fact, despite its steep terrain, the National Park and Peninsula isn’t even native habitat for the animals, which were introduced in the 1920s. Now, as Evan Bush at the Seattle Times reports, in an effort to protect visitors and habitat, the park’s 725 or so goats are being relocated or killed off.

According to a news release, back in May the National Park Service filed a final Mountain Goat Management Plan for the park, laying out a multi-year process of evicting the ungulates from the Olympics. The plan includes a two-week period this month, which began last week, for wildlife officials to sedate the goats and fly them out of the mountains via helicopter for re-location to the North Cascades National Park; there, mountain goats are a native species though there they’ve experienced precipitous declines due to overhunting. Two more two-week relocation periods are scheduled to take place next year. Officials believe they will be able to transport about half the goat population; any goats that are not reachable by wildlife officials will be killed over the next three to five years.

After they’re captured, the goats are being flown to a staging area where, according to Bush, they are fitted with a radio collar and undergo a full checkup and blood tests. When that’s accomplished, the animals are placed in special crates for transport to North Cascades, roughly 180 miles away. There they will be directly flown to five alpine habitat sites in the mountains to be released. Since that area has plenty of salt licks and vegetation that can withstand a glut of goats grazing, it’s believed they will adapt well and will stop harassing hikers.

“The translocation effort will relieve issues with non-native mountain goats in the Olympics while bolstering depleted herds in the northern Cascades,” Olympic National Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum says in the release. “Mountain goats cause significant impacts to the park ecosystem as well as public safety concerns,

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/washington-mountain-goats-are-being-flown-one-national-park-another-180970355/#ICdsqlj8RBEcBH7U.99

[riversedge]

1. Great story. Seems like they are doing what is best for goats.