Got your goat? At least one billy's a bully in Olympic National Park
One of about 300 mountain goats in Olympic National Park checks out the view from the Switchback Trail. The park has received reports of a billy goat that refuses to yield to two-legged trail users. -- Photo by Diane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News
By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News
Print This |
Email This
Recent Headlines
Nominate volunteers for Clallam County Community Service Award -- 1/21/12 -09:01 PM
Nominate your community hero for Jefferson County Heart of Service award -- 1/18/12 -09:19 AM
House OKs bill to give Quileute higher ground, public permanent access to Rialto, other beaches -- 2/6/12 -05:47 PM
Trying to get a sneak peek at the dams being removed? Fine! Literally! -- 2/6/12 -05:47 PM
He roams the Klahhane Ridge vicinity, now and again approaching people and "not backing off," Olympic National Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said.
There's no need to be alarmed when sighting this or any of the hundreds of mountain goats in the park.
But "we recommend that people stay clear and not approach" the goats, she added.
There have been reports of a goat in the Klahhane-Hurricane Ridge-Switchback Trail area that has refused to yield to two-legged park users, Maynes said.
"They use the trails just as people do. We tell people that if the goat is approaching them, they could throw rocks and try to scare him off."
The shaggy, bearded animals weigh between 150 and 250 pounds.
Both sexes have slender, spiky horns, so it's not always easy to tell the difference between billies and nannies.
Not native
Though the cloven-hoofed beasts seem at home on the Olympics' rocky peaks, they're not a native species.
Mountain goats were introduced during the 1920s, before Olympic National Park was established in 1938.
By the early 1980s, they had multiplied to more than 1,000 animals, said park wildlife biologist Patti Happe.
The kids are as agile as their parents, and can scramble across rocky slopes days after they come into the world.
The adults graze, of course, in Olympic mountain meadows, and can seriously damage the rare and endemic plants there.
The park launched a live-capture operation during the late 1980s, and lifted 407 goats out of the mountains via helicopter.
The animals were taken to the Cascade Range and other wilderness around the Northwest, Happe said.
Capture was difficult in the park's steep terrain. And the goat mortality rate reached 19 percent in 1989, according to an Olympic Park Associates report.
The federal Office of Aircraft Safety ruled the effort unsafe and shut it down in 1990, Happe said.
"What happened is we got all the easy goats. The harder ones are left."
More goats, more sighting
She suspects that the park's population has grown since 290 goats were counted in 2004.
The animals have a fierce craving for salt, Maynes added.
"So if you urinate along the trail, the goats are going to be there."
Tom Bihn of Port Angeles' boots have hit the Switchback Trail innumerable times, including several when goats were on the scene.
"I've dealt with that aggressive one," he said. "You throw rocks at him and he gets the idea to move on."
Bihn, an Olympic Park Associates trustee who's lived on the North Olympic Peninsula for eight years, said it seems mountain goats have become more common in the park over the past two.
"I've seen them in groups of three or four," on the Switchback Trail, he said, adding that other hikers have told him of nanny-and-kid sightings.
Maynes confirmed that it's no longer unusual to see a mountain goat around Hurricane Ridge and Klahhane Ridge.
"There has been a definite increase in goat sightings in the last few years," she said.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
Last modified: July 20. 2008 9:00PM