For three summers, wildlife managers wrestled mountain goats in Washington state’s Olympic National Park, blindfolded them and then flew them into the far reaches of the state’s Cascade Range — an ambitious project to boost the goat population in an area where they once were common.The researchers released a total of 325 goats into the Cascades from 2018 to 2020.Today, most of the goats scientists had been tracking are dead.“We were disappointed survival was as low as we found it was,” said Rich Harris, a now-retired state wildlife biologist who led the translocation project.It’s difficult to know exactly how many mountain goats have survived because not all were tracked. But in a study published in September, Harris found that the probability of a translocated goat living from year-to-year was just 56%. In a sample of 217 translocated goats, 165 had died by the end of 2022.The Everett Herald reported that wildlife biologists working with tribal nations could only find a few living mountain goats from the groups they had been tracking.The goal of the effort was to foster a mountain goat rebound in the Cascades, where the species’ numbers have fallen dramatically after decades of overhunting. At the same time, the project would eradicate mountain goats from the Olympic Mountains, where they were not native, and, according to some officials, harmed plants specific to the region. In 2010, a hiker was gored and killed in a rare attack — the mountain goat was too familiar with the presence of people.But the outcome of the project has revealed the degree to which climate change is rapidly transforming the rugged alpine landscapes of the Wes …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnFor three summers, wildlife managers wrestled mountain goats in Washington state’s Olympic National Park, blindfolded them and then flew them into the far reaches of the state’s Cascade Range — an ambitious project to boost the goat population in an area where they once were common.The researchers released a total of 325 goats into the Cascades from 2018 to 2020.Today, most of the goats scientists had been tracking are dead.“We were disappointed survival was as low as we found it was,” said Rich Harris, a now-retired state wildlife biologist who led the translocation project.It’s difficult to know exactly how many mountain goats have survived because not all were tracked. But in a study published in September, Harris found that the probability of a translocated goat living from year-to-year was just 56%. In a sample of 217 translocated goats, 165 had died by the end of 2022.The Everett Herald reported that wildlife biologists working with tribal nations could only find a few living mountain goats from the groups they had been tracking.The goal of the effort was to foster a mountain goat rebound in the Cascades, where the species’ numbers have fallen dramatically after decades of overhunting. At the same time, the project would eradicate mountain goats from the Olympic Mountains, where they were not native, and, according to some officials, harmed plants specific to the region. In 2010, a hiker was gored and killed in a rare attack — the mountain goat was too familiar with the presence of people.But the outcome of the project has revealed the degree to which climate change is rapidly transforming the rugged alpine landscapes of the Wes …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
