by For three summers, wildlife managers trapped mountain goats in Washington state’s Olympic National Park, blindfolded them and then flew them far into the state’s Cascade Range – an ambitious project to increase the goat population in an area where they were once common. .
The researchers released a total of 325 goats into the Cascades from 2018 to 2020.
Today, most of the goat scientists who were tracking him were dead.
“We were disappointed that survival was as low as we found it to be,” said Rich Harris, a retired state wildlife biologist who led the translocation project.
It is difficult to know exactly how many mountain goats survived because not all of them have been tracked. But in a study published in September, Harris found that there was only a 56% chance of surviving a transplanted goat from year to year. In a sample of 217 transgenic 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 live mountain goats from the groups they were tracking.
The goal of the effort was to foster the recovery of mountain goats in the Cascades, where the species has declined significantly after years of hunting. At the same time, the project would eradicate mountain goats from the Olympic Mountains, where they were not native, and, according to some officials, harm plants specific to the region. In 2010, a hiker was injured and killed in a rare attack – the mountain goat was all too familiar with the presence of people.
But the project’s outcome showed how rapidly climate change is changing the rugged Western alpine landscape – and how humanity’s best-laid plans for wildlife are being challenged by longer-term options that weather extremes become more likely.
Researchers knew that resettled mountain goats would have a hard first winter and expected some of them to die. They now suspect that the effects of climate change have affected mountain goat survival rates — and native goats are struggling too.
Off the bat, it was tough on the transition goats.
“You pick them up and drop them off in unfamiliar territory, the transition is traumatic at first. And it’s going to be a challenge to make your way in unfamiliar territory,” said David Wallin, professor of environmental sciences at Western Washington University.
But that would not fully explain the poor results. So Harris did an analysis that included native mountain goats in the Cascades for comparison — the results showed that their populations are also declining.
“Even though the transplanted animals didn’t do very well, they didn’t do any different than the native animals,” Harris said, adding: “It’s gone down significantly. Weather factors related to the climate have an impact.”
His study found that there was a correlation between the changing weather conditions associated with climate change and the survival rate of mountain goats over the past 20 years. The goats benefit from a cool spring with steady snowmelt, which leaves rich alpine meadows to feed on during the summer. But in recent years, they have experienced deep snowfall, rapid spring melt and summer drought.
“The take-home message is that wow – I’m not sure how a goat is going to be rising over the decade, two or three,” said Wallin.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates that the state’s mountain goat population has dropped from 1,537 in 2015 to 917 in 2022.
State, federal and tribal biologists spent years devising their plan to relocate the goats, convincing the public and, finally, doing the complicated logistics.
The plan called for capturing at least half of the Olympic goat population and moving them to the Cascades, then killing the goats they couldn’t relocate.
For three summers, helicopters cruised over the snow-capped peaks of Olympic National Park. The workers shot the goats with nets or darts attached to their legs, then cornered them, blindfolded them, administered tranquilizers, put them in cages and flew away.
The goats received veterinary care and were transported by refrigerated truck and ferry across Puget Sound, to be released in the Cascades.
In the end, vets euthanized six goats, 23 died during capture and three died during transport. Sixteen children were taken to zoos, according to Patti Happe, a since-retired Olympic National Park wildlife biologist.
Most of the remaining goats in Olympic National Park were killed, according to the plan: about 175. The effort ended in 2022, and Happe said visitors made only two credible reports of mountain goats last year.
Most of the animals were between 3 and 7 years old when they were relocated. Mountain goats can live well into their teens. Many were given GPS collars designed to track their location.
Harris said he knew the goats would struggle during their first winter but expected them to raise their survival rate to normal – around 80-90%. However, the newcomers did not seem to stabilize.
Alpine environments are changing rapidly as global warming pushes temperatures higher, Happe said. Charismatic species such as mountain goats – often spotted by hikers – are easy-to-spot examples of trends threatening marmots, pikas and other mountain species.
“They’re a good symbol of what’s going on,” Happe said. “Climate change – it threw us a bit of a curveball. I don’t think we thought it would hit us like this.”
The biologists behind the translocation project, however, said they do not see it as a failed or wasted effort. Happe said wildlife managers have seen some of the transferred females with children, suggesting they could reproduce and introduce new genes to the entire population.
It is still too early to know whether the species will repaint, so there is still hope for the goats.
“Despite some of our disappointment, I don’t think we did the wrong thing at the end of the day,” Harris said. “It may have been helpful to do, but it’s not going to stop the climate from changing.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
