Goat Plan Has Park Service On Horn Of Dilemma Officials Say It’s ‘Best’ To Shoot Olympic Park’s Mountain Goats

After years of trying to control mountain goat numbers through capture and sterilization programs, Olympic National Park officials have opted for a lethal alternative.

Get a helicopter, put a spotter and two marksmen aboard and shoot the beasts.

“It’s the best solution,” park Superintendent David Morris said. “It’s quickest, it’s cheapest, it’s safest.”

Shooting the hundreds of goats in the park is listed as the “preferred alternative” in a draft environmental impact statement released Tuesday.

A second suggested option is to try again to trap the goats and transfer them to places where they are native; a third would be to leave the goats alone.

“No one is going to be particularly happy with the proposal, but we have a mandate, so we have to plant the flag,” Morris said.

Park managers blame the goats, which are not native to the Olympic Peninsula, for devouring delicate high-elevation plants and for causing erosion and other soil disturbances.

The park has tried several different livecapture techniques to control the goat population. From 1981 to 1987, 260 goats were removed from the park after they were caught by using immobilizing darts, foot snares and drop nets.

Using a helicopter, the park captured 147 goats in 1988 and 1989, but the program was discontinued when up to 19 percent of the goats died and helicopter landings on steep terrain were considered too dangerous for park employees.

A 1994 census of the animals estimated their population within the park to be as high as 320, although the draft EIS says that may be low. It anticipates killing up to 500 goats during the three-year initial program, and as many as 20 per year after that.

Under the shooting option, goats would be killed from mid-May to mid-July and possibly in the fall. They would be shot over three years, at a cost of $337,000. Another $27,000 would be added in five years to shoot goats that wander into the park from outside its boundary.

The plan promises to be controversial.

“I have no doubt, if they try to fulfill their commitment to kill the mountain goats, we will challenge them in federal court,” said Cathy Sue Anunsen, Northwest coordinator with The Fund for the Animals.

“I don’t think the park has been able to document an impact, let alone a severe impact, on plants,” she said.

Anunsen’s group contends the goats may be native to the Olympics, based on a couple of 19th century explorer accounts and other sources. Three National Park Service reports, however, concluded the goats did not live in the area before they were introduced in the late 1920s, apparently to create a hunting resource.

The park service will hold public meetings to take comments on the draft proposal May 3 in Seattle and May 4 in Port Angeles.

“The guns aren’t mounted on the helicopter yet,” Morris said.

And killing the goats is supported by some conservation groups.

“I think (shooting) is the only practical way, unfortunately,” said Harry Lydiard of Port Angeles, a member of Olympic Park Associates.

“I’m a veterinarian, and I’d much prefer to see them transferred,” Lydiard said. “But they’ve tried capturing them with helicopters. Somebody would get killed. Shooting is not what we think of with the National Park Service, but it was done with excess elk in Yellowstone National Park.”