Post by: boneaddict on September 09, 2018, 03:42:12 PM
Post by: ghosthunter on September 09, 2018, 03:45:51 PM
Post by: PlateauNDN on September 09, 2018, 04:06:02 PM
Post by: jackelope on September 09, 2018, 05:01:33 PM
Post by: Dan-o on September 09, 2018, 06:37:05 PM
That's a BUNCH of goats.
Glad they're transplanting them.
Any idea how many goat thy estimate to be there?
I wouldn't have even guessed 750.
Post by: benhuntin on September 09, 2018, 06:49:29 PM
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Post by: Dan-o on September 09, 2018, 06:57:07 PM
Post by: Falcon on September 09, 2018, 08:15:03 PM
Post by: cem3434 on September 09, 2018, 08:25:31 PM
Post by: 180-GRAIN on September 09, 2018, 09:11:50 PM
Post by: npaull on September 09, 2018, 09:17:32 PM
Post by: Katmai Guy on September 10, 2018, 05:06:31 AM
Post by: benhuntin on September 10, 2018, 06:39:37 AM
Feds property, feds rules. Hopefully, the goats outside on are safe unless they wander into the park.The goats outside the park will be captured and moved next year. According to the bio.
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Post by: Jpmiller on September 10, 2018, 06:51:25 AM
Post by: Katmai Guy on September 10, 2018, 08:49:57 AM
Feds property, feds rules. Hopefully, the goats outside on are safe unless they wander into the park.The goats outside the park will be captured and moved next year. According to the bio.
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Crap!
Post by: Katmai Guy on September 10, 2018, 08:51:27 AM
That seems like a ton of goats I'm glad they're not all to be killed. Wonder how long before the ones they miss repopulate the park.
It should/better open up more permits for areas that have previously been closed.
Post by: X-Force on September 10, 2018, 08:54:36 AM
Feds property, feds rules. Hopefully, the goats outside on are safe unless they wander into the park.The goats outside the park will be captured and moved next year. According to the bio.
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Crap!
Even the goats out side of the park are on federal land.
Post by: Katmai Guy on September 10, 2018, 08:57:22 AM
Post by: X-Force on September 10, 2018, 08:59:51 AM
Post by: jackelope on September 10, 2018, 09:04:59 AM
The OP goat population is growing at 8% a year and they are assuming 750 goats are on the peninsula this fall.
I think they're hoping to be able to move 350 of them is where the numbers are coming from. @Bushcraft might be able to clarify.
I read something the other day and now I can't find it, but it said the OP goat herd makes up something like 15 or 20% of the entire goat population of the lower 48. I can't remember the number exactly, but it was big.
Post by: X-Force on September 10, 2018, 09:12:04 AM
This effort to translocate mountain goats from the Olympic Peninsula is a partnership between the National Park Service (NPS), the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW), and the USDA Forest Service (USFS) to re-establish and assist in connecting depleted populations of mountain goats in the Washington Cascades.
Area tribes lending support to the translocation plan in the Cascades include the Lummi, Muckleshoot, Sauk-Suiattle, Stillaguamish, Suquamish, Swinomish, Tulalip, and Upper Skagit tribes.
In May, the NPS released the final Mountain Goat Management Plan which outlines the effort to remove the estimated 725 mountain goats on the Olympic Peninsula. Both the plan and the associated environmental impact statement were finalized after an extensive public review process which began in 2014.
This month’s two-week effort to move mountain goats to native habitat in the northern Cascades is the first translocation operation since the release of the final Mountain Goat Management Plan. Two additional two-week periods are planned for next year. Mountain goats were introduced to the Olympics in the 1920s.
“Mountain goat relocation will allow these animals to reoccupy historical range areas in the Cascades and increase population viability,” said Jesse Plumage, USFS Wildlife Biologist.
While some mountain goat populations in the north Cascades have recovered since the 1990s, the species is still absent from many areas of its historic range.
Aerial capture operations will be conducted through a contract with a private company that specializes in the capture and transport of wild animals. The helicopter crew will use tranquilizer darts and net guns to capture mountain goats and transport them in specially made slings to the staging area on Hurricane Hill Road beyond the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center in Olympic National Park. The staging area will be closed to public access.
The animals will be examined by veterinarians before WDFW wildlife managers transport them overnight to staging areas in the north Cascades for release the following day.
During this first round, WDFW will only translocate goats from the park to non-wilderness release sites in the Cascades. There will be no closures for release operations in the national forests in 2018. To maximize success, goats will be brought directly to alpine habitats that have been selected for appropriate characteristics. To access these areas, goats will be airlifted in their crates by helicopter.
WDFW plans to release the mountain goats at five selected sites in the Cascades this month. Two release areas are near mountain peaks south of the town of Darrington, on the Darrington District of the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (MBS). The others are near Mt. Index, on the Skykomish Ranger District of the MBS, Tower Peak in the Methow area of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, and the headwaters of the Cedar River Drainage, which is land owned by Seattle Public Utilities.
“The translocation effort will relieve issues with non-native mountain goats in the Olympics while bolstering depleted herds in the northern Cascades,” said Olympic National Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum. “Mountain goats cause significant impacts to the park ecosystem as well as public safety concerns.”
Mountain goats follow and approach hikers because they are attracted to the salt from their sweat, urine, and food. That behavior is less likely in the north Cascades where visitors are more widely distributed than those at Olympic National Park, said Rich Harris, a WDFW wildlife manager who specializes in mountain goats.
“In addition, the north Cascades has an abundance of natural salt licks, while the Olympic Peninsula has virtually none,” Harris said. “Natural salt licks greatly reduce mountain goats’ attraction to people.”
For more information about mountain goats in Washington state, see WDFW’s website at https://wdfw.wa.gov/living/mountain_goats.html.
https://www.kxro.com/agencies-plan-to-start-translocating-mountain-goats-from-the-olympics-today/ (https://www.kxro.com/agencies-plan-to-start-translocating-mountain-goats-from-the-olympics-today/)
Post by: yakimanoob on September 11, 2018, 11:00:53 AM
Personally, I wish they would have just issued 750 any goat permits for the OP :chuckle: But yeah yeah yeah, population support for the North Cascades... I guess that's OK too.
Post by: csaaphill on September 15, 2018, 12:33:27 AM
but they should allow some hunting in the Olympics. :twocents:
Post by: jackelope on September 15, 2018, 05:06:44 AM
Yeah good read as to why where, and how thanks.
but they should allow some hunting in the Olympics. :twocents:
They do. Just not in the National Park.
Post by: Axle on September 15, 2018, 06:48:04 AM
Post by: Russ McDonald on September 15, 2018, 08:10:27 AM
Would be very nice to see some pictures of all this in progress.Go to King 5, Q13 all yhe news channels have been interviewing and showing video. If your on Facebook got to the Mt Baker/Snoqualmie NF page they have videos and WDFW has videos on their Facebook page.
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Post by: CedarPants on September 15, 2018, 08:44:30 AM
Crickets was the response I received.
Post by: SkookumHntr on September 15, 2018, 09:18:58 AM
Post by: MonstroMuley on September 15, 2018, 09:22:09 AM
It should/better open up more permits for areas that have previously been closed.
... (GMU 231) Gardner Goats may reopen? :o :drool:
Post by: Ghost Hunter on September 15, 2018, 09:36:50 AM
I wanted to volunteer to be a driver, think it wouldve been cool.
That's a good scouting technique. :tup: :chuckle:
Post by: trophyhunt on September 15, 2018, 09:44:17 AM
Post by: jmscon on September 15, 2018, 09:55:42 AM
and the headwaters of the Cedar River Drainage, which is land owned by Seattle Public Utilities. Only tribes hunt here, glad they put money into it.
I ran into some goats just a couple of miles south of there, I’ve also seen goats from I-90 just west of the summit. Hopefully it will bluster that herd. Don’t know if the are considered blazed ridge but I’m guessing they are distributed throughout that area. Also, genetically this should help all of these herds in the long run.
Post by: PlateauNDN on September 15, 2018, 10:12:11 AM
I wanted to volunteer to be a driver, think it wouldve been cool.
That's a good scouting technique. :tup: :chuckle:
No I would not have attached a tracker to said biggest Billie in the groups, nope, not me. :rolleyes: :chuckle:
Post by: RB on September 15, 2018, 01:10:32 PM
Where ya been, Bone? This has been going on for a while now. They’re going to move as many as possible in 3 years, and then shoot the rest.
Who will get to shoot the remaining Goats? And how can a guy get on the federal list to do this? Do they just shoot them and leave them or can they be brought out to use the meat and cape? There are many places (sporting goods stores hunting stores etc.)that would probably pay to have a full goat mount.
Post by: RB on September 15, 2018, 01:13:36 PM
I wanted to volunteer to be a driver, think it wouldve been cool.
That's a good scouting technique. :tup: :chuckle:
No I would not have attached a tracker to said biggest Billie in the groups, nope, not me. :rolleyes: :chuckle:
Shhhhh don't give away the secrets to all the honey holes :chuckle:
Post by: X-Force on September 15, 2018, 01:57:50 PM
Where ya been, Bone? This has been going on for a while now. They’re going to move as many as possible in 3 years, and then shoot the rest.
Who will get to shoot the remaining Goats? And how can a guy get on the federal list to do this? Do they just shoot them and leave them or can they be brought out to use the meat and cape? There are many places (sporting goods stores hunting stores etc.)that would probably pay to have a full goat mount.
They haven’t worked any of that out except the persons would have to know goats and be physically fit enough to hunt them.
When I asked about harvests I was told that it was not a hunt and that the likelihood is nothing could be salvaged and that the shooter would be encouraged to kill every goat they saw. So the shooter wouldn’t have a 1 goat permit it would be an area or a length of time.
Post by: jackelope on September 15, 2018, 02:01:55 PM
Post by: Katmai Guy on September 15, 2018, 04:48:29 PM
Is there going to be any access to the records of the goats that they transferred to find out age and Horn length?
Post by: RB on September 15, 2018, 07:55:34 PM
I’m assuming the shooters will be guys from the USDA. I believe that’s who was used for a while anyway on some of the bighorn sheep culls.
How does a guy guy get on that list? Is it near impossible to work contract for the USDA on a project like this?
Post by: PlateauNDN on September 15, 2018, 08:20:23 PM
Post by: cem3434 on September 15, 2018, 08:33:18 PM
I’m assuming the shooters will be guys from the USDA. I believe that’s who was used for a while anyway on some of the bighorn sheep culls.
What a waste. The majority of hunters will never have the opportunity to hunt goats and the Feds are just going to whack them and leave them lying? Sell unlimited either sex permits (1 per hunter) for a reasonable price and don't make it a OIL hunt. Let guys hunt goats in the park like the paid USDA hunters are going to do and the herd will be gone in a year or two.
Post by: Ghost Hunter on September 15, 2018, 09:36:57 PM
Post by: jackelope on September 15, 2018, 09:58:13 PM
I’m assuming the shooters will be guys from the USDA. I believe that’s who was used for a while anyway on some of the bighorn sheep culls.
What a waste. The majority of hunters will never have the opportunity to hunt goats and the Feds are just going to whack them and leave them lying? Sell unlimited either sex permits (1 per hunter) for a reasonable price and don't make it a OIL hunt. Let guys hunt goats in the park like the paid USDA hunters are going to do and the herd will be gone in a year or two.
It takes an act of Congress to permit hunting in a national park. Not saying it can’t be done, but literally. An act of Congress.
Lots of people are casting the blame on wdfw for doing this when it’s a fed thing.
Post by: Mtnwalker on September 16, 2018, 03:13:21 PM
Post by: X-Force on September 18, 2018, 12:16:52 PM
I’m assuming the shooters will be guys from the USDA. I believe that’s who was used for a while anyway on some of the bighorn sheep culls.
What a waste. The majority of hunters will never have the opportunity to hunt goats and the Feds are just going to whack them and leave them lying? Sell unlimited either sex permits (1 per hunter) for a reasonable price and don't make it a OIL hunt. Let guys hunt goats in the park like the paid USDA hunters are going to do and the herd will be gone in a year or two.
It takes an act of Congress to permit hunting in a national park. Not saying it can’t be done, but literally. An act of Congress.
Lots of people are casting the blame on wdfw for doing this when it’s a fed thing.
100% Fed thing.
National Park is trying to remove all invasive species; plants and animals. Forest service is saying what is the point of the park doing this if we still have goats on our land... so they are going along.
Public input would have been ZERO if ONP could have transferred goats to NCNP. Biologist found that the rock formations and alpine vegetation in NCNP is not conducive to goat populations and because of that there are very few goats in NCNP.
What I was told is that the park service can go around the "hunt" clause by designating people as having a particular skill, like, identifying goats, back country experience, expert marksman etc. So for this reason it sounds like they will try and use civilians to cull most of the goats and mop up with USDA gunners. This is also the reason shooters will not be able to take meat, hides, horns, etc. if those things were taken, groups who like to sue would jump on this as a hunt.
Post by: boneaddict on September 18, 2018, 12:25:48 PM
Post by: 2MANY on September 18, 2018, 12:29:33 PM
Post by: boneaddict on September 18, 2018, 12:36:49 PM
Post by: bigmacc on September 18, 2018, 01:44:20 PM
I guess I was aware of the driver thing and trucks, but the lightbulb didnt come on. I surely didnt realize the scope of the project. Sure seems like a waste for a species that is in so much trouble. Id love to see a bunch of them in the cascades like there used to be. Twisp River etc. It doesnt help that so much of that burned I suppose, though im not sure that effects the goats too much other than the stress from it.
Back in the day we used to see a lot up in the 30 Mile "area", still some in there from what I've heard.
Post by: X-Force on September 19, 2018, 10:52:55 AM
Post by: boneaddict on September 19, 2018, 11:03:33 AM
Post by: Katmai Guy on September 19, 2018, 11:32:35 AM
I guess I was aware of the driver thing and trucks, but the lightbulb didnt come on. I surely didnt realize the scope of the project. Sure seems like a waste for a species that is in so much trouble. Id love to see a bunch of them in the cascades like there used to be. Twisp River etc. It doesnt help that so much of that burned I suppose, though im not sure that effects the goats too much other than the stress from it.
Back in the day we used to see a lot up in the 30 Mile "area", still some in there from what I've heard.
Used to be able to drive up to Slate peak and would see them eating dirt from a mineral lick near the road. Was cool seeing them in the trees.
Post by: WSU on September 19, 2018, 11:34:18 AM
Post by: RadSav on September 19, 2018, 11:36:03 AM
Anyone know why the north Cascade population is "depleted?"
Brain worm was the last thing I had heard.
Post by: Russ McDonald on September 19, 2018, 08:05:10 PM
Post by: Timberstalker on September 19, 2018, 08:30:35 PM
Wild life bio i worked with said it was pneumonia.
I had never heard that goats were susceptible to pneumonia. Thought it was just sheep.
Post by: jackelope on September 19, 2018, 08:36:59 PM
It’s definitely a thing, but not nearly as common as the sheep issues.Wild life bio i worked with said it was pneumonia.
I had never heard that goats were susceptible to pneumonia. Thought it was just sheep.
Post by: ElaphusElatus on September 20, 2018, 09:39:48 AM
Anyone know why the north Cascade population is "depleted?"
Overharvest
https://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/00007/
Post by: HighCountryHunter88 on September 20, 2018, 09:46:51 AM
I’m assuming the shooters will be guys from the USDA. I believe that’s who was used for a while anyway on some of the bighorn sheep culls.
yea it will be APHIS im sure who does it. Their guys literally make a living culling animals
Post by: HntnFsh on September 20, 2018, 04:14:15 PM
The removal program is adding a couple days this weekend because of weather limiting access in previous weeks.
I was in contact with Rich recently. I was trying to get set up in time to haul a couple loads for them but the logistics just weren't working out. Hoped to haul this week. Ive got some of the stuff going to be able to help out. I'll have to wait until next year though. Darn!
Post by: Atroxus on September 20, 2018, 04:53:08 PM
ps. if anyone actually knows the cost to transport these goats let me know, I am curious, but I will be shocked and amazed if it is less than $1,000 per goat.
Post by: jackelope on September 21, 2018, 09:22:43 AM
Post by: JimmyHoffa on September 21, 2018, 09:51:12 AM
I’m not in a place to say for sure because I’ve never been there done that, but it seems like there have been a fair number of accomplished hunters in that area with the conflict permits in the past who can’t even find the goats, never mind kill one in a place where they can get to it and get out. It’s real easy to say hey, let the hunters in to kill the goats but having it actually work is a whole other story.The goats in the conflict area are on the fringe of the territory. The goats seem to make loops, and only a portion of the loop is outside the park. The areas outside the park are generally smaller. Examples being, High Divide/Deception Basin/Klahane Ridge (in the park) are big areas that usually have goats and are accessible even by kids; whereas Brothers/Goat Lake/Jupiter (outside the park) are hit or miss and can be a tough trek even for better than average hikers.
Post by: jackelope on September 21, 2018, 11:57:02 AM
Post by: MonstroMuley on September 21, 2018, 12:15:37 PM
If given a future opportunity with an OIL Tag ... would one harvest one of these North Cascades transplanted WDFW tagged animals (Mt Goat or any Big Game Animal for that matter) knowing the pharmaceuticals that have been pumped into that animal?
The Tranquilizing Drugs (Sedatives) and (Counter Sedatives) to Revive are said to "Metabolize" through animals tissue (over short time while alive), but Antibiotics may have long-term lasting presence in animals body...
Would one still consider this "Organic Game Meat"?
WDFW has a web page "Is Your Harvest Safe to Consume?" to check a tagged animal.
https://wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/safe_to_consume/
Note the text in "Why do game animals receive drugs?" ["In addition, when animals are captured, they sometimes receive injections of antibiotics or other medications."] Would be interesting to get specific details on exact tranquilizer (sedative and anti sedatives used ... i.e. Ketamine, Telazol, Tiletamine ... Fentanyl derivatives?), antibiotics and "other medications" ... always given general info at the 40,000 ft level.
Think I'll stick to "Organic Game Meat" and Pass on any Tagged (or "GPS Chipped") Animals ...
Post by: Axle on September 22, 2018, 08:29:13 AM
That's how I want to be taken in next time :IBCOOL:
Post by: JimmyHoffa on September 22, 2018, 08:36:49 AM
The way they transport those goats through the air looks like it would be a cool way to be taken into and dropped off at a remote spike camp.Years ago, a bunch of the elk camps would get flow in by helicopter. The heli-loggers would pick up the gear in a big cargo net and go put it where you asked. Then you had to hike in to go set it up. They would fly the camp and animals back out to your car when done.
That's how I want to be taken in next time :IBCOOL:
Post by: X-Force on September 25, 2018, 08:59:18 AM
A "win-win"
Mountain goats are native to the North Cascade mountains, though the population has been declining since the mid-1900s and experts aren't sure why. Ruth Milner has been studying mountain goats in the North Cascades with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife since the 1990s. She said relocating goats from the Olympic Peninsula to the North Cascades is a win-win.
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"It's kind of the perfect storm of their [Olympic National Park's] need to remove goats and our need to have goats returning to the Cascades," Milner said. The population of mountain goats in the North Cascades now hovers at roughly 3,000, down from a recorded high of 10,000 goats.
Professor David Wallin of Western Washington University has been studying mountain goats in the North Cascades for years. He's looking at a crate containing a goat ready for transport via helicopter.
Ashley Ahearn for NPR
"This translocation effort isn't going to solve the problem," said David Wallin, a professor in the environmental sciences department at Western Washington University. "But we figure we can move 300 to 400 goats over and that's a 10 percent bump in the population [in the North Cascades]. Our hope is that will help jump start the recovery." The infusion of goats will boost the genetic diversity of the dwindling North Cascades population.
Not their first goat rodeo
This is not the first time the Park Service has attempted to get rid of the mountain goats in Olympic National Park. In the 1980s several hundred goats were captured and relocated across the West, with limited success. But wildlife managers saw improvements within the Olympic National Park after the relocation.
"We saw the ecosystem bounce back," said Patti Happe, a wildlife biologist at the park. "When you get a group of goats hanging out in an area they move around and trample the soil and fragile vegetation. Goats have this habit that they like to dust bathe. They form these wallows and create big patches of exposed soil, and with erosion they get bigger and bigger."
But not all the goats were removed at the time. Since then the population has rebounded, and continues to rise at a rate of 8 percent per year.
"We know where it's headed and we want to act now," Happe said. "I've been working on this project for a very long time. It's time to resolve this. The more we wait, the more goats we're gonna have to deal with."
A 300-pound billy goat takes to the air, by crate, bound for its new home in the North Cascades.
Ashley Ahearn for NPR
So far this fall, more than 75 goats have been captured in Olympic National Park and delivered to sites across the North Cascades. Three more goat capture and relocation events are planned for 2018 and 2019.
The relocated mountain goats were fitted with radio collars and tagged so that their movements can be monitored in the coming years as they spread out and explore their new habitat.
Post by: LDennis24 on September 25, 2018, 09:09:18 AM
Post by: X-Force on September 26, 2018, 03:08:41 PM
Post by: quadrafire on October 18, 2018, 09:12:10 AM
NEWS
>
WASHINGTON
Opioid darts, helicopters, refrigerator trucks: How to move a goat from one mountain range to another
Thu., Oct. 18, 2018, 8:30 a.m.
A mountain goat that once lived at Olympic National Park took up temporary residence at Rattlesnake Ledge, a popular destination for hikers near North Bend. The goat was not afraid of people and not aggressive, but it got within about 12 feet of people, said hiker Hella Döge. “The goat was actually following us. Everyone shuffled around and tried to keep distance from the goat,” she said. (Photo courtesy of Hella D?ge / Seattle Times)
A mountain goat that once lived at Olympic National Park took up temporary residence at Rattlesnake Ledge, a popular destination for hikers near North Bend. The goat was not afraid of people and not aggressive, but it got within about 12 feet of people, said hiker Hella Döge. “The goat was actually following us. Everyone shuffled around and tried to keep distance from the goat,” she said. (Photo courtesy of Hella D?ge / Seattle Times)
For the Olympic Peninsula mountain goats, it plays out as an abduction.
A machine roars above, hovering. They feel the prick of a dart or become entrapped in a net.
Soon, a human being whose informal job title is literally “mugger” corrals them. A jab of the needle seeps a calming sedative into their bloodstream.
Within minutes, they’re dangling by rope beneath a helicopter, soaring to a makeshift veterinary center where they’re inoculated, tagged and loaded into narrow crates for a road trip.
Dazed, they’ll be released nearly a day later, dozens of miles and an ocean channel away.
This bizarre process is part of a plan – hatched years ago – to rid the peninsula of the creatures that national-park officials haven’t wanted for decades, and to help rehabilitate a population where they’re native, and struggling, in the North Cascades. Officials this year translocated nearly 100 goats between Sept. 10 and 24.
From the goats’ perspective, researchers say it’s a traumatic experience. To humans, it’s a feat of logistics.
To mug a mountain goat is about as simple as it sounds.
“It’s certainly macho stuff,” said Bob Garrott, a professor of ecology and wildlife management at Montana State University, who has taken part in similar translocations but was not involved in this project.
First, a helicopter pilot flies within about 25 feet. “You’ve got to be pretty darn close,” said Jim Pope, owner and chief pilot of Leading Edge Aviation, which carries out the captures.
Then, a gunner fires at a goat with a net gun or dart gun, avoiding air currents created by the chopper’s rotors.
“Nets are always preferred,” Garrott said. “You don’t have the uncertainty of the drugs — the pharmacological reaction.”
The darts contain the powerful synthetic opioid carfentanil. Gunners typically use darts in rugged terrain where boulders or trees could snag nets, or when nets put animals at risk.
The drug tranquilizes animals in minutes, which prevents them from tumbling off cliffs, for the most part.
Like people, animals have different drug sensitivities. “There’s always a chance you could overdose the animal,” Garrott said.
Once the goat is drugged or netted, a mugger must corral it.
“Most of the time, we don’t land,” Pope said. “We hover. You just step out. It’s not a big jump.”
With animals caught in the net, “there’s wrestling involved,” Pope said.
For tranquilized goats, muggers inject a drug to reverse the opioid’s effects.
“Once we got them on the ground and they’re anesthetized, we like to reverse them and get them breathing again,” Pope Jr. said.
Then, muggers inject a mild sedative to keep the animal calm during travel. They cover the goats’ horns with a rubber hose-like guard, wrap their legs with hobbling straps, pull a mask over their eyes and sling them into a harness before liftoff.
For the goats, the process can be disorienting.
“Think about some big alien grabbing you, physically restraining you, shoving you in some kind of compartment, taking you to a foreign place and turning you loose. These animals are going to be stressed out,” Garrott said.
It’s dangerous. Animals get killed.
“We lose helicopters and people, too,” Garrott said. A Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) biologist in 2007 was killed by a helicopter blade during a bighorn-sheep relocation. “Folks are putting their lives on the line for conservation.”
For this February 1948 article, Olympic National Park officials told The Seattle Times an estimated 100 goats lived in the Olympic mountains. Four goats came from the Canadian Selkirks in 1925, according to the article. Eight arrived from Alaska in 1929 in an exchange for Olympic Roosevelt elk calves. Most goats were released at Mount Storm King, beside Lake Crescent. Locals thought the goats had died, but noticed white forms on high crags in the early 1930s. (Seattle Times)
For this February 1948 article, Olympic National Park officials told The Seattle Times an estimated 100 goats lived in the Olympic mountains. Four goats came from the Canadian Selkirks in 1925, according to the article. Eight arrived from Alaska in 1929 in an exchange for Olympic Roosevelt elk calves. Most goats were released at Mount Storm King, beside Lake Crescent. Locals thought the goats had died, but noticed white forms on high crags in the early 1930s. (Seattle Times)
With wildlife, our mistakes often multiply.
A hunting group brought mountain goats to the Olympic Peninsula in the 1920s. Numbering just 12 when they arrived, they proliferated. Before relocations this year, officials estimated about 700 lived on the peninsula.
For decades, park officials moved goats and planned their eventual eradication. But protesters objected, academics challenged the park’s science and public distrust bubbled over. When a congressman got involved, the park relented.
Since then, some goats have become habituated, or accustomed to people. Some seek salt, often licking sweaty outdoor gear or lapping up hikers’ urine. A handful became aggressive.
When a goat fatally gored a hiker in 2010, park officials called off their detente.
In 2014, officials began a public process on goat management, finalizing a plan this year to rid the park of goats once and for all.
They framed it as a win-win. Olympic officials could restore the park to its natural ecology. Plus, by transferring goats to the North Cascades, biologists hope to boost genetic diversity there and increase a population still flagging after overhunting halted decades ago.
Patti Happe, wildlife branch manager for Olympic National Park, said the park has been intentional and forthright: It plans to kill the goats it can’t catch – hundreds of them.
“There’s no secret plans. What we said we were going to do, we are doing,” she said. “We’re going to treat them as humanely as possible.”
For now, the focus remains on live capture.
It’s a brisk September morning near Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park’s popular drive-up tourist destination, and two goats are dangling by a rope beneath a candy-apple-red helicopter.
Dazed, the goats spin listlessly, hooves hanging, seemingly hunched over their harnesses. As the helicopter descends, the masked goats betray little expression, as if they did not notice they’d cruised hundreds of feet off the ground.
Wearing eye masks, horn pads and leg straps, goats dangle from a helicopter. (Ramon Dompor / Seattle Times)
Wearing eye masks, horn pads and leg straps, goats dangle from a helicopter. (Ramon Dompor / Seattle Times)
It’s like “they have two glasses of wine, their blindfolds go on and they take a little ride,” said park- service wildlife veterinarian Jenny Powers.
A handler, wearing latex gloves, guides the goats into a waiting pickup truck. Other handlers hop in to help. They check the goats’ gums, looking for pink coloration.
“That’s the fastest way to see if they’re breathing,” Powers said. Blue gums mean trouble.
The handlers are careful to keep the goats lying comfortably on their chests, which helps prevent dangerous bloating. Sometimes, the mountain goats belch, venting gases from their four-chambered stomach, where microbes ferment nibbled shrubs and grasses.
“It smells sweet and very fermented,” Powers said. “I love that smell. That means they’re healthy.”
In the bed of the pickup, handlers gently hold the goats and the truck takes off for a picnic area converted to a medical camp.
Gloves are required.
Carfentanil, the synthetic opioid in the darts, is about 10,000 times more powerful than morphine for humans, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Gloves protect against accidental exposure.
Anyone touching animals carries a plastic container filled with opioid-reversing drugs, including fast-acting Narcan, known for treating heroin overdoses on Seattle streets, and another drug that’s even stronger.
Just in case.
Beneath a camping canopy, veterinarian Allison Case, of Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, stands over a folding picnic table with her patient, a 73-pound mountain goat freshly plucked from the Olympics’ Bailey Range. A bag of IV fluid drips down to the goat.
Case works through a checklist of care. Even with a paparazzi crowd of Seattle media members surrounding the tent and angling for shots, she spares not a moment for modesty.
“It’s a male,” Case says. “The perineum is gorgeous! Scrotum normal.”
The mountain-goat kid, with rubber straps around his ankles, lies on his side as Case glides her hands over the goat’s body. His tufts of thick hair — snow-white and fluffy at a distance — look raggedy, like an old carpet in need of cleaning.
Still blindfolded by his eye mask, the goat’s nostrils flare inside a plastic cup pumping supplemental oxygen, and his respiration fogs the plastic.
“I’m going to tickle his nose,” Case says, as she swabs it for testing. He wriggles.
“Hi buddy, that’s a good boy,” she coos at him, soothing and complimentary.
Case and several helpers work quickly: They extract blood, apply anesthetic, punch a hole in the goat’s ear to collect skin for DNA testing and install a barcoded ear tag. A member of Case’s team sticks a thermometer into the goat’s rectum and scoops stool for sampling.
The veterinarians aren’t sedating the kid goats, but Case gently sticks about a half-dozen other needles into the goat and loads him up with antibiotics. The vets want to bolster his health for the journey ahead and in his new home.
In less than two weeks, a helicopter crew captured 115 goats, according to a park count. A team of about 175 people — among them biologists, veterinarians and volunteer drivers — managed to successfully move 98 mountain goats across the state.
Six goats tumbled over cliffs or were killed by darts during capture. Two died during transport. Three were euthanized because of suspected disease or behavioral problems. Six orphaned kids were taken into captivity.
“The operation went very well,” Happe said. “These are not cows we’re moving behind the back of the pickup from a pasture. These are mountain goats in a mountain capture that we’re shipping over in the middle of the night. The survival rate is phenomenal.”
To move a mountain goat from one mountain range to the next requires helicopters, ferries and automobiles. The crews aim to keep the time between capture and release to less than 24 hours.
“We don’t have enough time in any one day,” said Rich Harris, the WDFW biologist leading the agency’s work to translocate goats.
The goal is to keep surroundings cold, dark, quiet and relaxing. Each animal is loaded in a separate crate because billy goats tend to act violently if housed with others.
Most of the time, crates are loaded into a refrigerator truck, which can hold nine animals. Nannies and kids are kept close so they can see and smell one another through crate openings covered with wire mesh.
Each crate is labeled with a goat’s ID number, gender, estimated age, weight and load time. The label indicates whether the goat is habituated and if it needs to be released together with another animal. Kids will fare better if they stay with their mothers.
Vets found most of the captured goats to be healthy, Happe said. This late in the season, the animals should be near peak condition. They’ve munched on plants all summer in anticipation of winter’s starvation diet, in which they can burn off 20-25 percent of their body weight, according to Garrott. Pregnant nanny goats have already given birth and the kids are growing fast. The fall mating season will soon begin.
As the goats cruise down Highway 101, drivers blast the refrigerator truck’s cooling system.
“They want those goats kept at 48 degrees,” said Rod Steinman, one of about 70 volunteers who hauled the goats east across Puget Sound by way of the Kingston-Edmonds ferry. Drivers were asked to stop every hour for 10 minutes to ensure the animals were getting enough air.
On the first day of transport, two goats died.
“We caught some really big billies. They were 300 pounds,” Happe explained. The crates, tested during a previous trial run, were too small.
“It was too stressful. They were too contained. The cause of death in the necropsy was capture myopathy,” she said, referring to a disease in which stress leads to organ failure. “We will be building bigger crates for next year.”
About five miles from Stillaguamish Peak, one of five release sites this year in the North Cascades, a helicopter descends slowly toward the highway on forest-service land, whipping up enough moisture from the dampened trees that it might as well be raining.
Technically, it’s still summer, but early in the morning it’s finger-numbing cold. A light mist hangs in the trees, but it’s finally clear enough to fly.
“All summer long — nice and clear. Ninety days,” said Rich Dahl, the helicopter contractor’s ground crewman, assessing the weather forecast for two weeks of releases. “We picked two weeks of rain.”
The weather had left officials improvising. When the helicopter was unable to fly, crews released goats in lowland areas, not ideal for survival.
On this morning, after the helicopter pilot objected to the planned landing spot, officials decide to blockade Mountain Loop Highway and use it as a helipad.
Volunteers, arranged around the goat crates like pallbearers, march the dazed creatures, captured the afternoon prior, from the refrigerator truck to the middle of a bridge. Then, Dahl connects the crates to the helicopter, two at a time.
The pilot fires up the engine and takes off, straining against the goats’ weight as the machine rises into the sky. On Stillaguamish Peak, biologists await the special deliveries.
Video captured by WDFW shows crates arranged in an orderly row. Two lines of plastic fencing run parallel to the slope’s fall line, directing goats to their natural habitat — rocky terrain farther uphill.
When handlers open the crate doors, the animals slowly trot to their new homes. The nanny goats remain purposefully sedated so they won’t outrun their kids in the frenzy of their release to freedom.
Researchers expected the goats to scatter, and sure enough, a goat high-jumps the fence and darts downhill.
“The hope is they find each other and group up,” said Jennifer Sevigny, a wildlife biologist with the Stillaguamish Tribe. The tribe, which championed the project, helped purchase GPS-equipped collars to track the animals.
Those collars, which are attached to most adult goats and should operate for several years, ping with a single GPS coordinate each day, Sevigny said. Researchers will track where the creatures settle, if they connect with other goats and if they survive.
“I think they’ve got a good shot,” said David Wallin, a professor of environmental sciences at Western Washington University. “Get through the first few weeks and their survival rate is going to be comparable to native goats.”
Two goats died in the weeks after their release, WDFW’s Harris said. The rest have been moving around, exploring. One habituated goat settled for a few days at Rattlesnake Ledge near North Bend, unafraid of the droves of hikers populating the trail and snapping photos of her.
After a WDFW attempt to capture and relocate the goat failed, she moved away on her own, Harris said.
Darker days loom for goats remaining in Olympic National Park.
Park officials plan two more rounds of helicopter capture next year. They expect to begin fatally shooting goats in 2020. Some will likely be shot from a helicopter. Officials are considering letting volunteer marksmen take aim, too.
Still, they know that this is historically the point at which the park’s plans have been thwarted.
“Will society, when push comes to shove, let you get the rest of the job done when it means killing animals?” wondered Garrott, the Montana ecologist.
The hunting group that brought mountain goats to the peninsula a century ago could hardly have predicted the controversy it would grow — or that its actions might lead to one of the largest goat kills of all time.
Post by: Bob33 on October 18, 2018, 10:14:07 AM
Post by: X-Force on October 24, 2018, 11:43:11 AM
I dont know if they were release goats but it was the first time I can remember seeing goats on the drive.