Two rather disparate questions

[pcg]

This is the sort of thing that finally led the National Park Service to remove the goats from the Olympics.

The bigger reason is that mountain goats are not native to the Olympics; people put them there so they could shoot them.

And they were destroying native vegetation.

[adamschneider]

As I understand it, the goats were introduced to the Elkhorn Range also and are not native.

I did some googling and learned that:

1) The goats that are in the Elkhorn Range now are there because of reintroductions in 1983 & 1986.

2) Those reintroductions were based on a GUESS that there had historically been naturally-occurring mountain goats up there. It's not conclusive. But apparently they figured, "ah, what the hell, people love seeing goats."

Pretty good overview here: https://www.bakercityherald.com/archive ... ba432.html

[walrus]

Well, I DO love seeing goats....