The Olympic Goat Controversy:
A Perspective
VICTOR B. SCHEFFER
14806 SE 54th Street
Bellevue, WA 98006, U.S.A.
Abstract: Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) introduced
into Olympic National Park are multiplying and
causing soil erosion and changes in floral composition. Park
managers want the goats removed or, if necessary, killed. But
the Fund for Animals, a national humane society, argues
that the present goat population should be left undisturbed
as a replacement of a presumed indigenous stock that disappeared
long ago. (I side with the park managers.) The
debate underscores the value of both logic (or reason) and
sentiment (or emotion) in making wildlife management de-
cisions.
Introduction
The 20-year experience of the National Park Service
(NPS) in dealing with the mountain goats of Olympic
National Park is a useful case history in wildlife management.
It is well documented (NPS 1987, 1988; Carlquist
1990; Houston et al. 1991a, 1991b). The NPS has concluded
that, if nonlethal means of preventing damage by
goats should prove infeasible, goats must be shot. The
Fund for Animals (1992) disagrees. In this paper I examine
the arguments offered by both sides in the de-
bate.
Background
Goats were translocated during the 1920s from Canada
and Alaska to the Olympic Peninsula (Fig. 1). In 1937
Paper submitted April 29, 1992; revised manuscript accepted March
2, 1993.
La controversia de la Cabra Olimpica: Una perspectiva
Resumen: Las cabras de montana (Oreamnos americanus)
introducidas en el Parque Nacional Olimpico se estdn multiplicandoy
causando ersi6n del sueloy cambios en la composici6n
floristica. Quienes manejan los Parques quieren
que las cabras sean removidas y si es necesario eliminadas.
Sin embargo la fundaci6n para los animales, una sociedad
nacional humanitariag argumenta que la presente poblacion
de cabras debe ser dejada sin perturbar como reemplazodel
supuesto stock indigena que desapareci6 hace tiempo.
(yo estoy de parte de los que manejan el parque.). El debate
toma en cuenta tanto el valor lo6gico (o de la razon) como el
sentimental (o emotivo) para tomar decisiones de maneo
de la fauna silvestre.
they numbered about 25 (Scheffer 1949:237) and by
1983 about 1200 (Houston et al. 1986). Although 155
goats are known to have been removed between those
years, the population grew at an average rate of about
9% a year.
But the soils and biotas of the park had evolved on a
goat free "land-bridge island" (Newmark 1987). By the
late 1980s, the park's drier regions were beginning to
show changes as a result of goat grazing, wallowing, and
trampling. Goats were even "mining" bare soil where
hikers had urinated! Most conspicuous were changes in
floral composition, such as the disappearance of lichen
and moss cover, which stabilizes bare soil surfaces in the
absence of vascular plants (NPS 1987:7-8). And the NPS
perceived threats to certain unique endemic plantsnine
species and varieties-growing in areas used by
goats.
Between 1981 and 1989, humans removed 509 animals
from the goat population (Houston et al. 1991b:
89). Of these, 360 were captured alive, 28 accidentally
killed during capture, 19 shot for research, 99 killed by
916
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Scheffer The Olympic Goat Controversy 917
Yukon
Territory
Northwest Territory
Pacific Ocean !
7JI__IdaholWyomingr;_Coi Ab Utah MColorado
Figure 1. Native range of the mountain goat
in northwestern North America, 1988 (National Park
Service map).
sport hunters outside the park, and 3 killed by poachers
(Fig. 2). At the end of 1990 the estimated population on
the peninsula was only 389 + 106 (172 goats seen).
That total showed clearly that removals by humans outnumbered
natural recruitment.
The NPS also tested population control by contraception
(NPS 1987:46-47). Later, an independent fivemember
panel comprised of veterinarians, wildlife biologists,
and a reproductive physiologist evaluated the
potential of goat control by contraception (Scientific
Panel 1992). Panel members visited the goat range,
studied past research by the NPS, and brought to bear
their collective experience with the application of contraceptives
to overabundant wild or feral animals. They
concluded that "current contraceptive or sterilant technologies
will not eliminate mountain goats from ONP."
Although the reestablishment of wolves (Canis lupis)
in the park would impose a degree of control on the
goat population, the NPS has never included this possibility
in its management plans. (The last Olympic wolf
was killed in the 1920s.) Students at Evergreen State
College have suggested that the Peninsula could support
at least 40-60 wolves (Students 1975:57).
In 1987 the NPS released an environmental assessment
that gave preference to settling the goat contro:
! .. *;; ;; ..... y ! | ! ! ! ! :: ! : :4,. , : . , ' . :
. : .. .... ..... . . . . . . . .. ' . ' . .
Figure 2. Two mountain goats, tranquilized by
aerial darting, are removed from Olympic National
Park, 1988 (National Park Service photo by Richard
W. Olson).
versy by removing all goats from the core of the park
and thereafter removing-by capturing or killing-any
that appeared along its borders (NPS 1987:52-54, 65-
67). Later, the NPS announced that it would release in
1993 a Final Environmental Impact Statement (Interagency
Goat Management Team 1992:6).
Conflict: Factual Considerations
The Fund for Animals (1992), a national society of
150,000 members, claims that goats occupied the OlymConservation
Biology
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918 The Olympic Goat Controversy Scheffer
pic Peninsula into the nineteenth century. If so, the
present population is a replacement or "restoration"
(my term) entitled to protection. The Fund builds its
case partly on a model drawn by anthropologist R. Lee
Lyman (1988) and partly on "documented and scientific
historical evidence." Lyman examined the known distribution
of goats in five northwestern states in relation to
the postulated distribution of Pleistocene ice lobes.
From a "dispersal model" of goat occurrences at various
times and places, he concluded that by 10,000 years ago
goats could have reached the Olympics. He suggested
that, if goat remains dating from the recent thousand
years ever should be found here, the NPS should rethink
its policy, quit calling the planted animals exotics, and
leave them undisturbed. The Fund for Animals also
points to narratives published between 1844 and 1917
that mentioned the goat as a member of the Olympic
fauna.
The NPS rests its case on the present distribution of
mammals in western Washington and on the unreliability
of reports of Olympic goats before 1925.
First, the goat is one of 11 species of mammals native
to the Cascade Range of Washington that are not native
in the Olympic Range only 120 km away (Dalquest
1948; Scheffer 1949). Among the missing are six species
characteristic of alpine or subalpine habitats. Conversely,
one mammal species (Marmota olympus) native
to the Olympics is not recorded from the Cascades.
Geologic clues indicate that continental ice in the Puget
Sound Basin would have isolated the high Olympics
from the high Cascades long before the first goats
reached North America, perhaps 40,000 years ago (NPS
1987:7, 17; Kruckeberg 1991:2-33).
Second, early reports of Olympic goats cannot be
taken seriously. For example, John Dunn visited the Indians
living near Cape Flattery and reported that they
"manufacture some of their blankets from the wool of
the wild goat" (1844:231). But ethnologist Erna
Gunther later learned from descendants of those Indians
that "the mountain goat does not occur on the Olympic
Peninsula.... Mountain-goat wool was bought in Victoria
[British Columbia] through the Klallam" (1936:117).
Albert B. Reagan, Indian Agent at Lapush in the early
1900s, excavated middens along the seacoast, where he
found remains of bighorn sheep and mountain goat
"usually only in the ladle form of the horns" (1917:16).
These, again, would surely have been trade goods. Eight
years earlier, Reagan (1909) had published a list of the
animals of the Olympic Peninsula; it did not include the
goat.
Two other narratives briefly mentioned Olympic
goats (Seattle Press 1890:20; Gilman 1896:138). The
first, composed after a five-month crossing of the Olympic
Range in winter and spring (the first crossing ever)
stated simply that "one goat was seen by the party." The
second included "mountain goat" and "pelican," among
other species, as "game animals" of the Olympics. These
narratives can hardly be taken as zoological records.
The strongest evidence-albeit negative-that goats
were not indigenous comes from the published accounts
of the dozen or more zoologists who explored
the Olympics between 1895 and 1921 on expeditions of
the U.S. Biological Survey and the Field Museum of Natural
History (Hall 1932:74). These explorers reported
no goats.
Ethical Considerations
But the goat controversy is basically a clash of human
values-the sort of controversy that is settled through
agreement rather than discovery. Informed public opinion
will ultimately determine whether Americans want a
goat-free Olympic Park at the cost of routinely exiling or
killing goats. The Fund for Animals has chosen unwisely
to offer what it calls "historic and scientific evidence"
(1992) in defending its case. Would not the Fund gain
wider public support by relying purely on moral persuasion?
Philosopher Mary Midgley has asked (1983:
33), "What does it mean to say that scruples on behalf of
animals are merely emotional, or emotive or sentimental?
What else ought they to be?"
Two lessons can be read in the Olympic Park experience
with its unwanted goats.
First, national park managers will increasingly deal
with exotic species as they deal with wildfires, hurricanes,
and floods: with patience yet with steady resolve
to maintain indigenous biosystems as nearly natural as
possible. While "natural" as a state unperturbed by humans
has long been an unreality-an abstraction-it is
still useful as a goal. And all land managers need goals,
however visionary or remote.
Second, animal welfare, an umbrella term for kindness
to animals, humaneness, animal protection, anticruelty,
and (lately) animal rights, will continue to grow in
American thought. As a societal endeavor to win greater
consideration for the interests of all living things, animal
welfare began in the 1960s to draw energy from the
"liberation" and "ecology" movements of that era
(Scheffer 1991:29-30). The significance of the animal
welfare ethic for national park managers is that they will
increasingly become more sensitive to public opinion-a
set of preferences compounded of sentiment (or
emotion) and logic (or reason). Park managers will increasingly
turn for advice to social scientists, who will
sample public attitudes and preferences with respect to
park uses; will develop new technologies for interpreting
park values; will assist in the drafting of regulations;
and will join in mediating disputes over the status of
exotic species, such as goats.
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SchefferThe Olympic Goat Controversy 919
Conclusions
The planting of foreign goats in the Olympics seemed a
good idea at the time and even 10 years later (1935)
when I first worked as a biologist in the Olympic National
Forest. But today, public attitudes toward natural
areas and their biota are changing. The more we humans
shape and color the landforms around us according to
the designs of each new generation, the more we treasure
those fragments kept undesigned. Wild places.
Places to which we respond with all our senses, places
where we bond with the earthly systems that nourish
our civilization and our species. If a personal thought
may be injected here it is this: the humane removal of
goats is a small price to pay for keeping the Olympics
wild.
Acknowledgments
For study materials and ideas, I thank Roger Anunson of
the Fund for Animals, Robert L. Wood of Olympic Park
Associates, and the generous wildlife biologists of Olympic
National Park.
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