[pct-l] Gorge Goats

[chelin at teleport.com (Sharon & Chuck Chelin)]

Good afternoon,

A while ago there was discussion on PCT-L about the plan to release mountain goats in the Columbia Gorge.  According to the text of the following Portland Oregonian front-page article it's going to happen this summer.  A graphic attached to the article in the paper showed that the release would be in the Herman Creek drainage. For those of you not familiar with the area, the Herman Creek is the first significant drainage immediately east of Eagle Creek.  Those two drainages are separated by the Benson Plateau, north of Wahtum Lake, upon which the designated PCT is routed.

I may have met some of the fuzzy-buggars that get moved.  I have hiked the trail atop their current home, the Elkhorn Ridge, and have walked to within about 50 yards of goats as they feed.  Maybe this year's PCT hikers will also have such luck.

Steel-Eye



Mountain goats due in gorge 
Oregon will release about 20 of the pointy-horned creatures this summer despite critics' concerns 

Saturday, April 16, 2005 

JOE ROJAS-BURKE 

Oregon will release as many as 20 mountain goats in the Columbia River Gorge this summer, over the objections of native plant advocates and other critics who say the goats could become an invasive nuisance. 

The state Fish and Wildlife Commission on Friday voted 5-1 in favor of the release, accepting the risk and uncertainty left by an unanswered question: Did the species ever naturally inhabit Oregon's side of the gorge? 

Returning the animals, according to biologists with the Fish and Wildlife Department, is a step toward reviving the ecosystem as it was encountered by Lewis and Clark paddling down the Columbia in 1805. For animal watchers, the release will provide opportunities to witness mountain goats commanding the high cliffs and rock outcrops of the gorge -- without leaving Interstate 84. 

Critics said questions about their natural range must be answered first because a non-native grazer could harm rare and threatened plants, including some that no longer exist anywhere else. 

"If there isn't conclusive evidence that goats were ever native to the gorge, then they don't belong there," said Michael Lang, conservation director for Friends of the Columbia Gorge. The nonprofit conservation group maintains that the U.S. Forest Service can't legally allow the release without completing a detailed and public environmental review. 

Commissioners determined Friday that the state action does not require federal review. Supporters said they were confident that browsing and trampling of rare plants could be controlled. Biologists will track goats by radio collar and regularly monitor the condition of sensitive plants. 

"It appears to me to be a pretty acceptable risk," said Donald Denman, one of the five commissioners who voted for the goat release. But commissioner Dan Edge, a wildlife biologist at Oregon State University who voted against it, said the department must first establish that goats were native. 

"The idea of moving animals around that aren't native to the state is technologically the wrong thing to do, ethically the wrong thing to do," Edge said. 

Not to be confused with bighorn sheep, mountain goats have pointy black horns about 10 inches long. Mature males weigh as much as 260 pounds, stand 4 feet tall, and males and females spend much of their time tussling with each other for status and prime foraging spots. Newborn kids begin climbing steep slopes within hours of birth. 

To whatever extent mountain goats occupied Oregon, the beasts disappeared from the state during the 19th century. Some researchers think the introduction of firearms and horses allowed trappers and Native American hunters to wipe them out. 

Since 1950 in Oregon, wildlife managers have completed more than a dozen releases of mountain goats taken from Alaska, Washington and Idaho. Three attempts in the gorge during the 1970s failed; too few goats survived to reproduce. Growing herds have persisted in the far northeast corner of the state in the Wallowa and Elkhorn mountains and Hells Canyon, with a total estimated population of 450. 

The plan approved Friday entails the capture of 15 to 20 goats from the Elkhorn population near Baker City. They will be released in the Mt. Hood National Forest around mid-July. Two more releases of 15 to 20 goats may follow in an attempt to establish a population of 300 over the next 10 to 20 years. 

The journals of Lewis and Clark, citing accounts from native people, tell of "great numbers" of mountain goats along the gorge, and provide part of the evidence cited by the department. State biologists also listed journals from the 1880s to the early 1900s with reports of mountain goat sightings and kills claimed by hunters in the Oregon Cascades and as far south as California. 

"ODFW has done the most extensive literature search to date," said Keith Kohl, a district biologist in The Dalles. 

Critics said the anecdotal evidence is unreliable. Jim Kirk, a Portland attorney who testified Friday, said Lewis and Clark refer to goats from the Washington Cascades, where native populations have persisted. 

Several members of the Oregon Hunters Association spoke in favor of the goat plan. Hunters have donated thousands of dollars for the goats' radio-tracking collars, but officials said hunting won't be considered in the short term unless the herds prove damaging and need to be culled. In the future, the population will have to stabilize at 50 animals or more, 15 percent of them male, for at least three years before the department will consider a limited recreational hunt.