Good luck! I hope it goes through. Here is recent MT goat transplant. It can be difficult and dangerous.
High hopes: The Montana FWP is re-establishing mountain goat populations in the Red Mountain area of the Scapegoat Wilderness
By DARYL GADBOW of the Missoulian
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists release mountain goats on a ridge near Red Mountain, on the southern boundary of the Scapegoat Wilderness. The department wants to re-establish a goat herd in the high country outside Lincoln.
Pat Shanley/Forest Service
As its name suggests, the Scapegoat Wilderness Area is the historic home of mountain goats.
Historically, however, mountain goats didn't travel far from their home range, which made herds in isolated pockets of habitat vulnerable to being wiped out by predators, especially man.
That's probably what happened to a native herd of mountain goats in the Red Mountain area on the southern boundary of the Scapegoat, according to Bob Henderson, a wildlife biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Missoula.
"By about 1980," says Henderson, "they had disappeared. Nobody really knows why. But it was probably a combination of legal and illegal harvest concentrated in one area of the Scapegoat."
Early state mountain goat hunting regulations established harvest quotas for hunting districts, he adds. But those districts were often quite large. And the hunting tended to be concentrated in the most accessible locations in a district. Although Red Mountain is in fairly isolated country, it could be reached by hunters relatively easily in motorized vehicles via an old mining road.
Mountain goats were originally distributed throughout steep, rocky terrain of Montana, Idaho and British Columbia, Henderson adds.
"They did well with the advent of settlers moving to the West," he says, "and when they were part of a population in a continuous set of habitats where they could interchange. But they had difficulty in small isolated pockets, because miners and others were able to over-hunt them and shoot them for meat.
"All the states and provinces, when they started hunting mountain goats in the 1940s and '50s, didn't monitor the status of populations as well as they could have. Red Mountain is one of those isolated habitats where populations got low enough that they couldn't sustain themselves."
But that was before mountain goats started traveling long distances by helicopter.
In two transplant operations, in February of 2002, and last Sunday and Monday, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has begun to re-establish the Red Mountain goat herd.
Last Sunday, FWP, with the help of a contracted "capture crew" - a private business that specializes in wildlife captures around the world by helicopter - snatched five goats from a herd of about 100 at Square Butte east of Great Falls.
FWP had hoped to capture 10 goats at Square Butte. But, says Henderson, the "goats were pretty wily. They got themselves down in the trees, and down in rocky crevices. They couldn't chase them out with the helicopter or throw the net over 'em. So it was a little frustrating. We intended to capture and release 10. But since we'd never tried to catch goats there, we didn't really know, but we kind of thought it was going to be easy. But as sometimes happens, it wasn't as easy as we thought it was going to be."
The five captured animals - four nannies and one billy - were then tested for diseases and parasites by FWP biologists, given some antibiotics and medicine for internal parasites, marked with ear and neck tags, fitted with radio collars, and loaded into individual crates.
Handling wild mountain goats can get a little dicey, according to Henderson.
"We put hoses over their horns," he says. "If you don't, you can get yourself stabbed pretty easily. They're pretty mean, really. But it's kind of fun, because people don't get to handle goats much. They're a different critter. Goats are a lot less common than deer, or elk, or sheep."
The goats in their crates were loaded in trucks for a 150-mile drive to Lincoln. Then, on Monday, the five goats were loaded into a "Huey" helicopter - three goats in one trip and two in another - for a 10-mile ride to a ridge near Red Mountain.
The five goats joined a band of 13 from a 2002 transplant operation from the Crazy Mountains of eastern Montana.
By themselves, says Henderson, the five goats released at Red Mountain Monday probably wouldn't do much to re-establish a herd.
"But when you add them to the ones on the mountain now," he says, "it practically doubles the population. If they stay there this winter, they should be in pretty good shape."
At least three of the four transplanted nannies should have kids in the spring, Henderson says. The fourth nanny may be too old.
"One of the interesting things about Square Butte," he adds, "is that the goats there are on such a good nutritional level that in some years there's quite a bit of twinning."
Twin kids are an anomaly among mountain goats, according to Henderson.
While the prognosis for the goats at Red Mountain looks good, Henderson says, an earlier attempt by FWP to transplant goats to the area failed.
In 1989, he says, Olympic National Park in Washington was trying to reduce its burgeoning population of mountain goats.
"They took a lot of goats out of there," he says. "They went every which way. A lot of states got goats that year."
Red Mountain received a transplant of the goats from Olympic National Park in the summer of 1989.
FWP released the goats near, but not actually in, the goat habitat at Red Mountain.
"They ended up scattering to all points of the compass," says Henderson. "They didn't stay. We think it was because it was a summertime operation. And they were not kept on the transplant site. So that's why we went to the idea of putting them in there in the winter, and right in their winter range, so they have time to bond with their range and stay. Hopefully, the nannies will drop kids there in June. That will cement the goats to the area."
Monitoring of the goats transplanted to Red Mountain in 2002 showed that a winter transplant could be effective.
The mountain goat transplant operation this week was a cooperative effort that was successful thanks to the contributions of several individuals, groups and agencies, according to Henderson.
Missoula's Five Valleys Chapter of Safari Club International, with Jim Weatherly taking the lead, paid for the capture of the goats at Square Butte, "which is the bulk of the cost" of the entire operation, Henderson says.
The local Safari Club chapter also provided funds for the 2002 transplant at Red Mountain. The chapter has also paid two graduate students to monitor the goats in the summers since the first transplant.
"When Bob (Henderson) had the opportunity to get the goat herd going at Red Mountain, we thought it was a unique chance for us to get involved," says Weatherly, whose group has funded various research and game management projects in Montana.
Two Lincoln-area sportsmen and businessmen, Louie Bouma and Jim Johnson, also provided "significant monetary contributions" to the project, according to Henderson.
Bouma and Weatherly also helped the crews with the capture and release of the goats. Johnson would have liked to, Henderson says, but he was on a hunting trip in Mexico.
The U.S. Forest Service helped pay for the cost of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation helicopter that was used to release the goats in the wilderness area.
"I think they're in pretty good position to re-establish the population," Henderson says of the transplanted goats. "We'll continue to monitor them. We have three of the new goats with radio collars and two of the ones from two years ago have functioning radios."
Several of the other goats have unique neck-band markings, he says, so biologists can keep track of their movements.
A similar transplant operation in the 1980s restored mountain goats to the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area near Missoula after the native goat herd "had basically winked out" in the '70s, according to Henderson.
"They're kind of a picturesque critter," says Henderson. "They evolved to take advantage of cliffy habitat, primarily alpine habitat. And they're adapted to the deep snow and cold. They're best known for their white color and physical characteristics of being able to negotiate steep, rugged terrain better than just about any other animals in North America.
"For a lot of folks, whether they hunt 'em or not, mountain goats are seen as representatives of wilderness-type country, because they tend to live on the top of mountains. People who get a chance to see them almost always remember precisely when and where they saw the animal. It's kind of a unique experience."
