Mountain goat removal from Olympic National Park more than halfway complete
Scientists’ plan to capture and relocate all 725 of Olympic National Park’s mountain goats is more than halfway complete, after a new round of culling this fall resulted in the deaths of 31 goats.
This was the third year that state and federal agencies used helicopters and tranquilizer darts to airlift the wayward animals, considered an invasive species in the Olympics, back to their ancestral home in the North Cascades — a habitat that boasts delicious salt deposits, making it more suitable for goats than the salt-lacking Olympics.
So far, 412 goats have been removed from the Olympics, with 325 of those goats safely airlifted to the North Cascades.
Mountain goats were introduced in the Olympics in the 1920s by hunters, and have been damaging to native flora and fauna since.
In 2018, the National Park Service and Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife finalized a plan to remove the entire Olympic mountain goat population. It prioritizes safely capturing and releasing them each summer and fall until conditions become icy and hazardous, and then killing the remaining ones in the area.
This fall’s operation centered on the Daniel J. Evans wilderness area, with several rounds of targeted killing in September and October, according to a NPS press release.
The lethal removal was done by 20 teams of trained volunteers, chosen through an elaborate vetting process in which over 1,200 groups applied.
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 12:10 PM.
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