Oregon Hikers

On a more immediate note, the Mt. Ellinor trail in Olympic National Forest will be closed for two weeks starting on Monday: http://outdoor-society.com/mount-ellino ... is-summer/

The plan is to entirely eliminate goats in the Olympic Mountains over the next few years, mostly by sending them to the North Cascades instead. They're not native to the Olympics and were only brought there in 1925 for the benefit of big-game hunters, and they're not good for the ecosystem. https://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/ ... cation.htm

Interesting that the feds find money for this, but keep ignoring my pleas that they relocate all the Columbia Gorge ticks to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Chip, there's an injunction barring your tick "relocation" project until the government finishes their investigation into the history of weaponized ticks:

The US House of Representatives has ordered an investigation into whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects as biological weapons.

In an amendment passed last week, the House calls for the Defense Department's Inspector General to look at whether any such experiments were done between the years 1950 and 1975.

...I wish I were making that up...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics ... index.html

I am aware that popular opinion is that mountain goats did not exist in the Olympics prior to 1925, even though the Seattle Pree reported their existence in 1890, G.G. Steele of USGS noted their presence during surveys of the late 19th century and National Geographic had an article in 1896.

It's difficult to believe that mountain goats traveled the full length of the Oregon Cascades including the Strawberry Mountains (see recent trip report), but somehow decided to avoid the Olympic Peninsula because, what, it rained too much there...even though they have flourished since being reintroduced in 1925. Could it be that the local Indian tribes hunted them to extinction?

This NPS article notes the various reports of goats and concludes that they were all made in error. How convenient. The government not taking-in historical facts, that never happens, right?

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_ ... 5/appb.htm

I'm sure I will get a lot of criticism for not agreeing with NPS and native plant groups who want to see the goats relocated, but I would like to put it out there that there is documentation that 1925 was not the first citing of a goat int he Olympics.

BigBear wrote: ↑

August 20th, 2019, 11:49 am

I'm sure I will get a lot of criticism for not agreeing with NPS and native plant groups who want to see the goats relocated, ...

Maybe, but not from me. Interesting. Not quite interesting enough to stay up all night looking into it, which is probably what will happen if I don't tear myself away from this and get ready for bed.

The fact that they were apparently not present there in, let's say 1920, then deliberately placed there by humans lends force to the idea that they do not 'belong' there naturally. The best argument against that would be if the goats came back again on their own without any help. If mountain goats are removed from the Olympics and then re-enter entirely on their own and re-establish themselves in future decades, I'm pretty sure that the NPS would leave them be.

Aimless wrote: ↑

August 21st, 2019, 9:35 am

If mountain goats are removed from the Olympics and then re-enter entirely on their own and re-establish themselves in future decades, I'm pretty sure that the NPS would leave them be.

I wonder if they might say "oops, looks like we missed a few".

Chip Down wrote: ↑

August 16th, 2019, 5:14 pm

Interesting that the feds find money for this, but keep ignoring my pleas that they relocate all the Columbia Gorge ticks to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Hunters would have done it at $0 cost to taxpayer funds.

xrp wrote: ↑

August 22nd, 2019, 11:40 am

Chip Down wrote: ↑

August 16th, 2019, 5:14 pm

Interesting that the feds find money for this, but keep ignoring my pleas that they relocate all the Columbia Gorge ticks to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Hunters would have done it at $0 cost to taxpayer funds.

I was totally perplexed at your mysterious post, but then I realized you meant the goats, not the ticks.
Anyway, interesting point. I wonder why they didn't just issue more goat tags, or open it up without restrictions. A cynic might suggest that government bureaucracies always seek the most complicated expensive solution to any problem.

Anyone familiar with the wild horse overpopulation problem in the Great Basin or the deer overpopulation problem in places like Pennsylvania could probably guess why the US government did not simply issue sufficient hunting tags for every mountain goat in the Olympic peninsula to be killed. It would draw vociferous crowds denouncing the cruel barbarity of such a hunt.