One last round of goat relocation begins Monday

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK – The fourth and final round of translocating mountain goats from Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest to the northern Cascade Mountains begins on Monday and will last two weeks. After that, officials will rely on a program of lethal removal tactics to get the population down to zero.

Before the translocation effort began in 2018, the number of mountain goats, introduced to the area around a hundred years ago, was about 725. The hope was to be able to move about half the population to the Cascades to replenish dwindling populations. To date 326 goats have been removed, with all but 49 successfully relocated.

The goats that remain tend to be in terrain that is much more difficult to access by helicopter, but ONP spokesperson Penny Wagner thinks they can still get a lot of them out of there before they resort to lethal removal.

“We are always hopeful we can capture and translocate another between sixty and a hundred, and then after the ground-based lethal removal this fall, it will then switch to aerial lethal removal operations the following year.”

Ground-based removal will entail putting teams of hunters in the mountains to track and shoot the goats. Wagner says the response to their call for qualified volunteers was overwhelming.

“Yes, so in mid-April the application period ended. We had over 1,200 groups apply. So there’s three-to-six people that are needed in a group. That’s over six thousand applications that were received. They were evaluated and then 21 groups were selected. And they will participate in the three rounds that will happen in between September and October this Fall.”

Wagner says the hunters will be operating primarily in very remote areas of federal lands where visitors will be unlikely to encounter them. The final stage will be lethal removal from helicopters sometime next year.

Trail Impacts and Road Closures

The staging area for the mountain goat capture operation is located beyond the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center in Olympic National Park along Hurricane Hill Road and is closed to public access.

Hurricane Hill Road is closed completely beyond the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center through August 9 for mobilization, capture operations, and demobilization. This closure includes the Hurricane Hill Trail, Little River Trail, and Wolf Creek Trail. Hurricane Ridge Road and all other area trails remain open.

A map of the area trails is available on the project website at nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/mountain-goat-capture-and-translocation.htm.

For more information about mountain goats in Washington State, see WDFW’s website at wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/oreamnos-americanus.

For more information and updates on the project, visit nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/mountain-goat-capture-and-translocation.htm.