Grand Teton NP to exterminate Mountain Goats

[Bow Bullet]

The was posted on Bowsite.

Grand Teton park to begin killing invasive mountain goats

Grand Teton National Park officials say an operation to kill mountain goats is beginning on Sunday, Jan. 5.

www.wyomingnewsnow.tv

Seems to me relocation or removal by hunters would be a better option.

 

[Travis Hobbs]

Using hunters would only make sense....

But when you are the federal government and money is no concern, you don’t do things that make sense and save money.

 

[wymtnpounder]

Wonder how you get that job?! Jellystones probably next they've been talking about it for years. Park management has been a disaster for longer than I've been alive.

 

[Dust Rider]

Wyoming has tried for years using hunters to reduce the numbers. It hasn't worked. The Tetons are steep and nasty.

 

[jmden]

Olympic National Park in Washington has transported a bunch of goats from the Olympic Mountains to the Cascades Mountains within the state. The plan is to get all of them out of the Olympics as apparently they are not native.

They keep this stuff up and most of us will eventually get transported somewhere else or terminated.

Seems like they could transport the goats to somewhere that might want them...

 

[Poser]

Wyoming has tried for years using hunters to reduce the numbers. It hasn't worked. The Tetons are steep and nasty.

Also, hunters move goats around and I read that they were concerned about disease spreading to the sheep. Hunting isn’t great for extermination in that regard. Once the decision was made, they probably just wanted to get it done as fast as possible. Hunting these goats out might take years Also, it’s NPS land and the NPS doesn’t tend to allow much hunting. They should but they don’t.

I read somewhere else that pressure From backcountry skiing is also an issue that is keeping sheep out of some of their winter habitat.

 

[rob86jeep]

They just had this same discussion on one of my facebook groups i'm a member of. The consensus of people who seem to understand the issue and not be driven by emotion is that goats are in too rugged/too hard or places for hunters to be successful enough to cull the amount they need to. It would be nice to allow hunters the opportunity, but it wouldn't get the job done soon enough (or successfully). All it would do is make some hunters happy but it wouldn't solve what they're trying to do.

 

[Mountaingates]

Love to go hunt one these but yet they get to justify just killing them instead of letting one of us sportsman fulfill one of our dreams

 

[Azone]

Do they try to salvage meat in deals like this or are the birds gonna eat like kings?

 

[Mountaingates]

i would sure think they would harvest the meat

 

[204guy]

Setting the general public loose to hunt in a national park is, imo a bad idea. Hunting in a NP is a pipe dream, not gonna happen anyway. Also the state has aggressively hunted the goats on land they have the ability to issue tags on. In most units theres only a couple goat tags, in unit 4 they issued something like 48. I doubt there were 48 goats living outside the park and the hunting pressure no doubt pushed goats into the park.

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[Mountaingates]

I doubt they would just turn folks loose. Be no different then how Wyoming used to run the buffalo hunts years ago, and very true it probably will never happen. There really isn’t much hunting pressure on the goats as there are very limited amount of tags here in Wyoming. Most them goat hunts are for the hardy and serious hunter.

 

[kestump]

Grand Teton National Park is one of the few park units that actually does allow hunting. Late season cow elk opportunities in the lower parts of the park. If folks actually saw the terrain the goats are in I think you would realize why they decided on the helicopter option. Public hunting alone would not achieve their objective.

 

[WCB]

Be interesting to see the general public's reaction to helicopters and gun shots while on their sight seeing vacation. I saw them hunting from helicopters in New Zealand right above town and it bothered me and I hunt.

 

[DAOutfitters208]

How do goats conflict with the bighorns? Disease? Call me naive, but it seems like terrain they would be native to. What areas are native habitat for the mountain goats? I

 

[Poser]

How do goats conflict with the bighorns? Disease? Call me naive, but it seems like terrain they would be native to. What areas are native habitat for the mountain goats? I

Disease is a secondary issue, yes, but it’s principally a matter of winter food sources.

 

[Poser]

All of these fat boy heroes on social media throwing a fit about “hunters should have tags for these goats”, have 0 concept of the terrain. You would need to be a reasonably skilled alpinists to get to these goats in the Tetons. Depending on the time of year, An axe and crampons and probably prepared to build your own anchors and do some rappelling depending on where you end up. Definitely some 5th class climbing, possibly some mandatory more technical climbing. If they issued a tag for every goat every year, I think folks would still be trying to hunt out them 10 years down the road. The exception might be if hunters shot them with rifles from longer distances and didn’t attempt to recover them, but that’s one step removed from shooting them from a helicopter.

I don’t know. I just don’t see a reason to throw a temper tantrum over this and hunters complaining to other hunters definitely does very little. If people are so upset, they should be lobbying the NPS to allow more hunting in general. That might actually accomplish something. Between the pissed off, imaginary goat hunters and the goddamned CWD deniers, it’s getting hard to have rational discourse out there on the hunting related inter webs.

 

[204guy]

Guys probably aren't going to be lining up to risk their lives to kill a nanny.

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[4ester]

Disease is a secondary issue, yes, but it’s principally a matter of winter food sources.

I’d imagine that some of both species drop to the valley floor or lower elevations to winter. I doubt 100 goats are going to eat all the grass when bison and elk herds are in the area. I don’t buy it.....


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[cardbender1]

Goats do not necessarily go lower in elevation in winter. Most stay high all year.