Grand Teton National Park staff want to remove nonnative mountain goats from the park/NPS
Nonnative mountain goats in Grand Teton National Park will either be relocated out of the park or killed under a proposal that seeks to remove the animals from the park and adjacent John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway.
Public comment on this proposal is being taken through January 6. The aim of the goats' removal is to aid in the conservation of a native population of bighorn sheep and protect other park resources and values from the rapidly growing nonnative mountain goat population.
The Mountain Goat Management Plan and Environmental Assessment is open for public review. The park also is hosting an open house on Wednesday, December 12, at The Wort Hotel in Jackson, Wyoming, from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. The hotel is located at 50 North Glenwood Street.
Currently, the nonnative mountain goat population within the park is estimated at approximately 100 animals. Resident mountain goats within the park are likely from a population that was introduced outside the park southwest of the Teton Range in the late 1960s and early 1970s. First observed in the Teton Range in 1979, they have now established a breeding population that is growing rapidly.
The Teton Range within the park is also home to a small herd of approximately 80 native bighorn sheep. Prior to 2015, the population was estimated to be approximately 100-125 sheep. This herd is one of the smallest and most isolated in Wyoming, and has never been extirpated or augmented. The Teton Range herd of native bighorn sheep is of high conservation value to the park, adjacent land and wildlife managers, and visitors.
Research indicates that the potential for resource competition and disease transmission between mountain goats and bighorn sheep is evident, and expected to increase. Bighorn sheep are highly susceptible to pathogens and disease transmission. Without active management, the mountain goat population is expected to continue to grow and expand its distribution within the park, threatening the existence of the native Teton Range bighorn sheep herd.
Park staff believe action is needed soon because the mountain goat population in the park is currently at a size where complete removal is achievable in a short timeframe. The estimated growth rate of the population of goats in the park suggests that complete removal in the near future may become unattainable after about three years.
Three alternatives to respond to the situation have been identified in the environmental assessment; 1) no action, 2) lethal and nonlethal removal of nonnative mountain goats, and 3) lethal removal of nonnative mountain goats.
The preferred alternative at this time is to use a combination of capture and translocation, and lethal removal methods. The goal would be to remove the mountain goat population as quickly as possible to minimize impacts to native species, ecological communities and visitors. Goats could be translocated to suitable locations where they are native, or to accredited zoos, or lethally removed. Based on current estimates of mountain goat numbers, significantly reducing or eliminating the population is achievable in the next few years.
Comments
When we were dealing with a problem raccoon, research told us that raccoons had to be relocated in excess of 25 miles, or else they would find their way back. I don't know if that is true or not but that was the guidance we followed. Is there similar information on these goats?
They definitely get around. However, I think the idea of relocation isn't to get them to a relatively nearby area, but to a completely different area.
Humans already messed up the ecosystem by deliberately introducing them to a place where they aren't native. I don't know if moving them to areas where they'll be competing with an established population of mountain goats is going to end up well. It's not an endangered species, so the best solution might just be to eliminate the population where it was introduced. I found a Forest Service report that includes observed migration patterns.
The report doesn't necessarily get into what happens once a mountain goat is removed from its range to a new one relatively close. It could very well want to get back. This report just categorizes routine migration patterns.
The mountain goat problem @ Grand Teton Natl. Park should be nonlethal removal of the nonnative mountain goats. i don't feel lethal removal is right.
I agree Lisa that non-lethal removal is what I would rather see. But, if it is proving difficult to remove them all non-lethally, then I am for culling the remaining ones. It appears that the last study of the bighorn sheep count that the goats are already causing a drop in bighorn numbers. 2015 there were 125 roughly and now, 80. If forced to choose between the native bighorn and non-native goats wandering into the park, then the goats need to go.
Leave the goats alone! It constantly stuns me as to why predetors are chosen over non predetors. The National Park Service introduced wolves and continue to relocate grizzly bears but 100 goats are a serious treat? Some say that they have been in area for 40+ years but they are a threat now? After that long in the area nature has certaily run the course on any disease processes. So if the goats are such a threat how do people justify Canadian Wolves being brought to the area? Let's not forget, there were wolves in Grand Teton National park pre- 1983 and yes, my family and would come across them.
Most human beings living in the United States are not "native" to North America, but does that mean they need to be removed as well? Please do not harm even one hair on one of these "non-native" goats! They have a right to live on this planet, just like all of the other creatures.
Another idiotic proposal by the NPS which remains
greatly underfunded and has difficulty thoroughly cleaning restrooms with lower maintenance budgets. So,
now we learn the Hunter-Biased Ranger Elements
(not trained ecologically) are proposing to spend scarce natural resource funds to slaughter a native North American species attempting to survive on a fragment of subalpine park habitat. As we learned
today, the growing USA Culmulative DEBT of
$22,000,000,000,000 (our "Maxed Out Credit Card")
says the NPS will never be adequately funded ? Today
many GOP -Trumpian Law Makers obviously do not Respect
National Park Resource Values or Requests for Funding Billions of $ in
Maintenance Projects Preferring only "Chinese Border Wall Funding"
merely to please the EGO of their favorite dictator: Narcissistic Trump !
This NPS nonsense
about "not native" is idiotic in the sense that indigenous mammals are mobile, subject to migrations where suitable habitats may be accessible under a changing climate, and changing landscape. This old NPS idea/proposal
that what biota existed in 1850 as a "freeze-framed" biotic landscape can be sustained today 170 years later and
managed under changing climate forces is not justifiable !
The only constant In Dynamic Nature Is Change
especially under growing human population pressures destroying wildlife habitats.
The entire argument to restore wolves has been an attempt to restore predator-prey interactions. Predator-prey relationships
were documented nearly a century ago by the Murie Brothers, Ade and Olaus, professional Naturalists who often were disrespected by the same ignorant early NPS Manager Mentality consumed with the mistaken idea that all park predators needed to be eradicated to enhance charismatic species like elk, moose, deer and pronghorn.
None of these ranger manager personalities and the NPS Culture they forged have ever respected the new science of Ecology nor Wilderness Values; they're basically anti -science and were promoted to key positions via cronyism, as generalists poorly educated ! Simply study the NPS
Wildlife Science Life of George Wright to more fully understand what the NPS Lost with his early death.
Current managers have been more interested in building momuments to their own Egos including more roads, expanding parking lots and building visitor centers to increase visitation.
So, now as children and their parents spend scare travel money supporting
the Non Profit Yellowstone and Grand Teton Natural History
Associations purchasing cute mammal muppet babes, Will uniformed rangers LIE
to these young minds telling tales that since the "white buffalo" doesn't belong here, thank you for assisting our parks to fund their slaughter ? since our eagles, bears, cougars and wolves truly aren't too effective in really reducing mountain goat kids ?
The NPS argument
that flora is harmed is truly questionable too since not that long
ago, the extinct megafauna prowled the land and
drove the evolution of vegetation subject to browsing
today ! There were far more numerous herbivores of diverse
species dependent upon the same vegetation communities.
Actually, today, Humans continue to adversely affect vegetation
more greatly simply by destroying pollinator populations via pesticides.
Read:
White Goats White Lies: The Misuse of Science in Olympic National Park Hardcover - March 1, 1998 R. Lee Lyman (Author)
and
"WASHINGTON - The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/12/national-debt-to...