Mountain goat relocation begins in Olympic National Park The Finlander and I used to ride up to the Olympic National Park on his Honda 750 to look at the mountain goats. We always needed binoculars. I remember once at a pullout these two chicks came up to us and asked “are those mountain goats?” I looked up on the bank about 100 yards away at the most and there was a couple of patches of snow. My Pop sort of stumbled through a polite response to these ladies. When they left I said “what was wrong with those ladies?” He replied something about drugs and or alcohol. Cool. Lol.
Yea, relocate the goats because people want to utilize the park without having to deal with anything more dangerous than a chipmunk!
The real issue is and always was, these goats were NOT native to that area, and with NO Preditors locally and no hunting allowed, they out grew their habitat... Just because some YAHOOs thought they would be good fot the Tourists, to look at....
Imported by a hunting group with the intent that they would be hunted, but; after the Olympic Park being declared a National Park that went out the window. I'm thinking the National Park designation is what made the goats a nuisance, even though they were not native. Good they are relocating them, not good the remaining goats will destroyed rather than allowing them to be hunted.
Don't know about that particular bunch, but some were destroyed a few years ago after catching diseases from domestic sheep. At that time the danger was that the goats were more resistant to diseases than the wild sheep and they were trying to protect both the wild sheep and the domestic sheep from an untreated wild population that could spread the disease over time. Agree that hunting would be better, but given the greens, that is not likely to happen. Similar to problems with buffalo with cattle diseases in Yellowstone, they have resistance to some diseases that cattle do not and act as a source of contamination, or at least that is the ranchers line for limiting the herds, couldn't have anything to do with eating grass on leased land could it?
Mountain goat kills man in Olympic National Park This from a few years back. Not a fair fight. If I recall the widow tried unsuccessfully to sue the ONP.
Note to self: Don't pee on the rocks at Mt Olympia when goats are around and being too stupid to carry a firearm....
Hey! I am all in favor for those poor animals to be relocated to N. Idaho for us to care for and watch over.. Through scopes..
makes me roll my eyes. they don't tell you how many they kill during the relocation. I witnessed an antelope 'tagging' operation once. They were tagging antelope to study them on a large ranch in the west. Chase me with helicopters and dart them at 40 miles an hour. the lose 25% of the antelope they dart so that they can put transmitters on the, to broken necks. The State thinks that acceptable in the name of science but they wont issue hunting tags. Go figure
