WWU professor works to help protect mountain goats in the Cascades

When David Wallin was asked by the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe eight years ago to help figure out why the number of mountain goats in the Washington's Cascades was so low, he was puzzled.

"How could mountain goat populations possibly be in trouble?" wondered Wallin, an environmental science professor at Western Washington University.

Most of the alpine environment in the state that makes up mountain goat habitat is protected as national forest, park or wilderness, he said, so how could their numbers be dwindling.

Mountain Goat

Over-hunting in the past turned out to be one reason. A newer culprit is Interstate 90, which runs east from Seattle and cuts across the Cascades.

Think of it as a big road that mountain goats are reluctant to cross. That means different populations don't mix with each other much. And so I-90 isolates the goats geographically and genetically - and that reduces their chances of survival, according to Wallin.

"The single most important factor that's structuring mountain goat populations in Washington state is the I-90 corridor," he said. "It's not an absolute barrier, but it's a very strong impediment."

Wallin is among a group of researchers studying the regional decline of mountain goats.

It's a collaboration kick-started by the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, for whom the mountain goat is important historically and culturally, and includes lead biologists from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as well as the U.S. Forest Service.

They've studied the causes for the drop and are considering how to boost those numbers. The implications go beyond the goats, which are icons of wild places and the Cascades.

"They are representative of the alpine environment and that environment's health," said Leslie Parks, a graduate student in WWU's Huxley College of the Environment who is working with Wallin on the project.

POPULATION DROP

Hikers enjoying alpine beauty on the trails around Artist Point likely have seen white specks in the distance that, through binoculars, are revealed to be mountain goats. (At Artist Point, the Ptarmigan Ridge Trail is one of the easiest places to find them.)

Mount Baker is one place in the state where mountain goats are doing well, with an estimated 300 to 400 goats there, according to Wallin.

Goat Rocks Wilderness Area, near Mount St. Helens, is another area in the state where the population seems to have stabilized.

In total, there are an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 mountain goats in the Cascades in Washington state. Around Darrington, the population has dropped by about 90 percent - among the biggest declines, Wallin said.

Historically, going back 50 to 80 years, the mountain goat population in the state was believed to number around 10,000.

Mountain goats actually are in the antelope family. In summer, they're found at or above the tree line in the mountains, above 5,000 feet. They're adept at climbing, including the cliff faces they use to protect themselves from predators.

Both male and female goats have curved, sharp, black horns and white, shaggy coats. Adults can weigh from 180 pounds, up to 250 pounds for a really large goat.

They spend winters at lower elevations, just below the tree line, for protection from the weather and greater access to vegetation for food.

The dramatic drop in their numbers is being attributed to over-hunting from the 1950s to the late 1980s, when Fish and Wildlife was issuing 300 to 400 permits a year to hunt goats on the assumption that they could be managed like deer.

But mountain goats reproduce at lower rates and their survival rates are lower than those of deer, according to Wallin.

"(Mountain goats) simply can't withstand that level of harvest," he said. "In hindsight, they made some decisions that were understandable at the time but also turned out to be very wrong."

So in the early 1990s, wildlife officials cut the number of hunting permits issued statewide to 15 to 20 annually.

"Everybody thought that should address the problem," Wallin said.

It did, in some places like Mount Baker and Goat Rocks Wilderness Area. But the population didn't rebound as expected.

"Many herds within Washington remain very small, and some former goat ranges remain unoccupied," Parks said.

BARRIERS

In their search for why goats haven't bounced back, scientists now believe that I-90 is a contributing factor because it cuts across the Cascades, separating goat populations on the north and the south, essentially walling them off from each other, according to Wallin.

Genetic tests of different populations show plenty of inbreeding, which in turns means a loss of genetic diversity that could affect the long-term survival of mountain goats in the Cascades.

To test the DNA of goats, Parks and her interns spent the summer camping in high places where mountain goats were expected, waited for them to leave, then collected their scat for study.

I-90 is among the features of a modern landscape that mountain goats must navigate when they come down from their alpine habitats, Park said.

"Mountain goats also are dependent on low-elevation habitat to maintain connectivity between populations," she said. "The modern landscape that goats must negotiate in order to move between populations includes forest service roads, highways, one interstate and varying levels of development."

Exactly why the goats are reluctant to cross I-90 isn't known. Is it the road itself, the traffic, or development along the road like businesses and houses?

The impact of such barriers are being studied nationwide. In Washington, concern about the effect of man-made barriers on mountain goats and other wildlife prompted the formation of the Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group.

The group is part of the Wildlife Corridors Initiative created by the Western Governors' Association. The fear is that the ability of wildlife to move from one habitat to another in search of new homes, mates, food and shelter is being harmed as the state becomes more populated and developed.

Back to I-90, efforts are being made to create wildlife crossings - to allow animals to move above or under the highway - as part of improvements and widening of the interstate east of Snoqualmie Pass. The project will build the first wildlife overpass in Washington, according to the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition.

Wallin said such wildlife crossings for I-90 are an experiment, but noted a similar project has been done with the TransCanada Highway, which bisects Banff National Park.

"For the most part it seems like they've been successful and the animals are using them," Wallin said. "We're optimistic what's being done with the I-90 upgrades are going to be helpful."

While wildlife crossings could help mountain goats cross the road and, ultimately, broaden their gene pool, another option is to relocate goats from British Columbia, where there is a large and healthy population, or from Olympic National Park.

The current genetic study focuses on understanding how mountain goat populations in Washington are related to populations in British Columbia, Wallin said, and whether B.C. goats could be relocated to help those in the Cascades.

Wallin said he expected they could.

As for the mountain goats in Olympic National Park, they were a non-native species introduced in the 1920s by hunters who took six from Southeast Alaska and six from northern B.C. and plunked them onto the peninsula. By the 1980s, they had grown in number to 1,000.

Genetically, they're different from the ones in the Cascades. But in the 1980s, in an effort to keep the goats from overgrazing Olympic National Park, parks officials captured as many goats as they could and gave them away, including 150 that were moved to the Cascades to augment declining populations.

Genetic tests showed those goats from the park survived and bred with the native goats.

Fish and wildlife officials have been considering using the Olympic goats again, Wallin said. But much remains to be finalized, including which populations of mountain goats would be relocated and where they would go in the Cascades.

"Given state budget cuts these days, it's all up in the air," Wallin said.

ON THE WEB

Learn more about mountain goats and habitat connectivity in Washington state at:
- wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/research/projects/mtn_goat
- nps.gov/noca/naturescience/mountain-goats.htm
- waconnected.org
- i90wildlifebridges.org