How one zebra won more concern than vanishing mountain goats

Mountain goat and zebra on snowy mountain.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Yipes! Stripes make a difference in who gives a damn.

CONCRETE, Washington––With global attention focused on Shug the escaped zebra running at large through mountain goat habitat in the Cascade Mountains, Everett Herald environment reporter Ta’Leah Van Sistine revealed to an audience of apparently almost nobody that an alleged scheme to rebuild the North Cascades mountain goat population to “huntable abundance” instead appears perilously close to extirpating the species from much of what has historically been their best habitat.

(See Last zebra back behind bars; owner Kristine Keltgen bales on barista biz and Zebras on the run––and what is owner Kristine Keltgen running from?)

The mountain goats might fare better if able to grow black strikes on their fuzzy white flanks.

Mountain goats in Washington.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Biologists don’t find dookey––or at least not much of it

Some wags imagined that Shug the zebra might have found and joined a mountain goat herd during her six days at large.

If Shug could have done that, despite the immense differences in habitat needs between zebras, native to the African plains, and mountain goats, favoring icy alpine meadows, her goat-finding abilities would evidently have exceeded those of the state-hired biologists who have spent about $200,000 a year in recent years to mostly not find goat droppings.

Mountain goat runs from biologists.
(Beth Clifton photo)

Low survival rate

Of 325 mountain goats relocated from Olympic National Park to the North Cascades in 2018-2020, Ta’Leah Van Sistine reported, only four of the 151 who were radio-collared are still alive.

This amounts to a survival rate of about 12% of what the National Park Service, National Forest Service, and the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife anticipated teamed up to live-trap the mountain goats, tranquilize them, helicopter them in slings to parking lot staging areas, and then truck them 100 miles east to territory where they could be hunted.

(Beth Clifton photo)

GPS collars

“About five years ago,” Ta’Leah Van Sistine recounted on May 1, 2024, “wildlife biologists with the Tulalip Tribes used GPS collars to start tracking 115 mountain goats translocated from the Olympic Peninsula to the North Cascades.

“Only three are still alive today. Wildlife biologists with the Stillaguamish Tribe found similar results. Out of 36 translocated goats they tracked, only one is still alive.”

The expected lifespan of a mountain goat is typically from ten to 13 years.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Population down by at least two-thirds

The mountain goats were flushed from Olympic National Park, Ta’Leah Van Sistine recalled, “to remove non-native goats from the Olympic Peninsula,” where they could not be legally hunted within Olympic National Park, occupying most of the Olympic mountain range, “and potentially boost the population in northern Washington,” most of which is open to hunters.

“At the same time,” Ta’Leah Van Sistine said, “biologists noticed goats native to the North Cascades were also dying at an alarming rate. In 2017, biologists with the Tulalip Tribes counted 145 mountain goats near Whitehorse and Three Fingers mountains — where they tend to roam in large numbers. Last year, the biologists counted eight near the two peaks.

“Over 10,000 goats lived in Washington as recently as 1961, according to the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. Now, an estimated 2,400 to 3,200 remain,” Ta’Leah Van Sistine reported.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Shot a lot of ’em, but don’t know why they disappeared”

“Mountain goat experts are unsure about the exact cause of the decline,” Ta’Leah Van Sistine continued, “though they have multiple theories. Recreation, habitat loss, climate change, disease and predation are among them.”

“Recreation” might translate into “shooting too many.”

“Disease” might translate into “The Olympic National Park mountain goats, constantly exposed to people, evolved resistance to human-carried diseases, otherwise fatal to mountain goats, that the translocated goats carried into less visited habitat.”

“Predation” might translate into “recovering populations of pumas and wolves,” though the healthy puma population of Olympic National Park had little effect on mountain goat abundance, if official mountain goat population estimates were to be trusted.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Shot a lot more just to get rid of them”

As well as helicoptering and trucking the 325 mountain goats from Olympic National Park to the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests, “Between 2020 and 2022, volunteers and agency staff killed 152 mountain goats in the Olympics,” Ta’Leah Van Sistine mentioned.

(See Goat sacrifice to begin at Olympic National Park and The National Park Service wants to get our goats.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Don’t know why they’re living on a volcano”

Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife ungulate specialist William Moore told Ta’Leah Van Sistine that while other Washington mountain goats populations are declining, the Mount Saint Helens population has increased.

“In 2014, biologists counted 65 goats and now estimate some 400 goats live there,” Ta’Leah Van Sistine summarized.

What Ta’Leah Van Sistine did not mention is that except for some seasonal elk hunting in the Mudflow, Pumice Plain, Mount Whittier, Norway Pass and Upper Smith Creek game management units under Washington State jurisdiction, and in one adjacent part of the Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument, the 172-square-mile region is off limits to hunters––and totally off limits to mountain goat hunters.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Ecological misconceptions

Mountain goats were exterminated in Olympic National Park because of ecological misconceptions written into the Wilderness Act of 1964, enshrined as National Park Service policy.

One such misconception is that “introduced” species are inherently harmful to “native” species, even if the “introduced” species are “native” just 100 miles away, among essentially the same suite of other animals and plants.

Another misconception is that what is now Olympic National Park, attracting from 2.4 to 3.4 million visitors a year, depending on weather, ever fit the Wilderness Act criteria of being “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Visitor impact

Olympic National Park visitors have approximately the same cumulative ecological impact as a year-round community of six thousand to nine thousand people.

Further, the mere existence of more than 200 sites in the park where archaeological artifacts have been found, mentioned often in the 284-page Mountain Goat Management Plan/Final Environmental Impact Statement, points toward frequent, if not necessarily continuous use of the habitat by Native Americans for thousands of years.

Even before the area now encompassed by Olympic National Park became the present park, it was a National Monument, designated in 1909.

Native American activities, as well as logging, hunting, and ranching by settlers, helped to shape the habitat and balance of species into which mountain goats were released in 1925-1929 by forest rangers who hoped to attract trophy hunters.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Huntable” abundance

Trophy hunting, however, has not been allowed in Olympic National Park since it was created by an act of Congress in 1938.

In the North Cascades mountain goats have long been heavily hunted, until recently when hunting mountain goats has been suspended in several management areas due to scarcity.

Indeed, the Mountain Goat Management Plan argued that the Olympic National Park mountain goats should be moved to the North Cascades because the mountain goats native to the North Cascades had already been hunted to scarcity, and were having difficulty recovering “huntable” abundance.

(Beth Clifton)

“Sensitive vegetation”

“The original need to manage this exotic species,” the Mountain Goat Management Plan inaccurately claimed, “was an ecological concern related to the impacts that mountain goats impose on natural resources at the park, particularly sensitive vegetation communities.”

NewspaperArchive.com demonstrates that the first complaints about the presence of mountain goats in Olympic National Park surfaced in 1969, and concerned salt-seeking goats licking and chewing clothing that visitors hung out to dry in campgrounds.

Four goats were translocated from Olympic National Park to the nearby Gilbert Pinchot National Forest in 1972, but the first mention that all of the goats should be removed as a “non-native” species came in 1977, as did the first suggestion that the goats might be harming native plants.

(U.S. Forest Service photo)

“Protecting the safety of visitors”

More goat translocations followed, but primarily to rebuild populations elsewhere that had been hunted out.

Acknowledged the Mountain Goat Management Plan, “The park implemented a series of live capture operations from 1981 to 1989, translocating 407 mountain goats to other mountain ranges throughout several western states.”

Protecting the safety of Olympic National Park visitors continued to be the main argument made for mountain goat removal before the mid-1990s, though the first and only serious injury attributed to mountain goats before 1999 came in August 1975.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Goats kill one, injure two, in 80 years

Then, according to the Port Angeles News, “Daniel Hanify, 17, was watching goats climbing on the rocks above him on Mt. Angeles when one goat apparently started rocks tumbling. One large rock struck Hanify on the head.”

Hanify suffered a skull fracture, but was able to walk to the nearest road, with the help of two friends, to be driven to meet a helicopter that flew him to Olympic Memorial Hospital.

An Olympic National Park visitor suffered a non-fatal goring in 1999.

“Safety concerns were increased in 2010,” the Mountain Goat Management Plan summarized, “when a visitor,” 63-year-old Robert H. Boardman, “was fatally gored by a mountain goat while hiking on a park trail.”

Mountain goats. (Beth Clifton photo)

Global warming

That was the last such incident. In 80 years, fewer visitors were killed or badly injured by mountain goats in Olympic National Park than typically die and are injured in the worst several vehicular accidents within the park and on park access roads each and every tourist season.

(The remains of two of those accident victims, Russell and Blanch Warren, who drove off the road into Lake Crescent on July 3, 1929, were only discovered in 2002.)

Beth & Merritt Clifton

While fretting over the possible mountain goat effect on Olympic National Park alpine vegetation, the Mountain Goat Management Plan never mentioned the major climatic effects on park vegetation evident as result of global warming, having an accelerating impact today, as the year-round icepack retreats to higher elevations, less precipitation falls, stream temperatures warm, and the risk of wildfires increases.