Opioid darts, helicopters, trucks: Moving Mountain Goats from one mountain range to another.

[PearliePoo2]

***Heavy photo and video content***

https://projects.seattletimes.com/2018/moving-mountain-goats/

snip:

"For the Washington State Olympic Peninsula mountain goats, it plays out as an abduction.

A machine roars above, hovering. They feel the prick of a dart or become entrapped in a net.

Soon, a human being whose informal job title is literally “mugger” corrals them. A jab of the needle seeps a calming sedative into their bloodstream.

Within minutes, they’re dangling by rope beneath a helicopter, soaring to a makeshift veterinary center where they’re inoculated, tagged and loaded into narrow crates for a road trip.

Dazed, they’ll be released nearly a day later, dozens of miles and an ocean channel away.

This bizarre process is part of a plan — hatched years ago — to rid the peninsula of the creatures that national-park officials haven’t wanted for decades, and to help rehabilitate a population where they’re native, and struggling, in the North Cascades. Officials this year translocated nearly 100 goats between Sept. 10 and 24."


WITH WILDLIFE, our mistakes often multiply.

A hunting group brought mountain goats to the Olympic Peninsula in the 1920s. Numbering just 12 when they arrived, they proliferated. Before relocations this year, officials estimated about 700 lived on the peninsula.

For decades, park officials moved goats and planned their eventual eradication. But protesters objected, academics challenged the park’s science and public distrust bubbled over. When a congressman got involved, the park relented.

Since then, some goats have become habituated, or accustomed to people. Some seek salt, often licking sweaty outdoor gear or lapping up hikers’ urine. A handful became aggressive.

When a goat fatally gored a hiker in 2010, park officials called off their detente.