Mountain goat populations have been on the decline in Montana for 70 years. Researchers are working to learn more about the nimble climbers, which means going where the goats go – and that's easier said than done. But no mountain is too high, no weather too extreme to stop us from answering this week's question: What happened to the mountain goat population in the Bitterroot Mountains?
Austin Amestoy: Welcome to the Big Why, a series from Montana Public Radio where we find out what we can discover together. I’m your host, Austin Amestoy. This is a show about listener-powered reporting. We’ll answer your questions – large or small – about anything under the Big Sky. By Montanans for Montana, this is The Big Why.
Reporter Ellis Juhlin is here.
Ellis Juhlin: Hey Austin! This week we’re talking goats.
Austin Amestoy: Ah, the animal? Or the acronym for Greatest of all time? Aka legendary Hollywood composer John Williams – you know, E.T., Jaws, Star Wars.
Ellis Juhlin: Yes, the household name of John Williams. I don't know enough, or anything, about John Williams, and I think you probably know that. So suffice to say, we’re talking about the animals. Mountain goats, to be specific.
Austin Amestoy: We will pick up John Williams later, Ellis, off-air.
Mountain goats, the big white, fluffy creatures that scale mountainsides?
Ellis Juhlin: That’s them!
This week’s question comes to us from Bitterroot based listener Liz Neilson
Liz Neilson: In 2004 I drew a mountain goat tag and basically scouted for a month. The country where they live is incredible, you know, steep, icy, scary. It was a little scary.
Ellis Juhlin: And ultimately, she got her goat. But in the years that followed, she said she’s noticed fewer goats when she’s out and about.
Liz Neilson: In 2004 I saw mountain goats every time I went out, and now I haven't seen mountain goats for many years.
So she wanted to know: What happened to the population of mountain goats in the Bitterroot Mountains?
Austin Amestoy: You know, Ellis, I’ve only ever seen mountain goats in a zoo, or at Glacier National Park, probably the Logan Pass parking lot.
Ellis Juhlin: I’ve seen them there too. I learned for this episode Montana is actually one of the furthest south places in mountain goats native range. So, west of and along the Continental Divide there are goats – think of the mountains encircling the Flathead and the Bitterroot Valleys, and the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
But in the 1940s and '50s, people brought mountain goats into other ranges, east of the Divide, like the Crazy Mountains and the Gallatin Crest.
Austin Amestoy: So, people were bringing goats into those mountains? What do you mean?
Ellis Juhlin: They captured the goats, put them into large wooden crates, and strapped them onto horses. It’s something you really have to see to believe, so I'll put a photo of this online.
But to help us get a mental map of where mountain goats are found, I’m going to bring in Nick DeCesare, he’s a wildlife biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, or FWP.
Nick DeCesare: A lot of the work that I do concerns ungulates or large mammals in Montana. So, that includes species like moose, mule deer, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats.
Ellis Juhlin: While this question came to us specifically about goats in the Bitterroots, the declines our listener noticed, are not unique to that range, so I’m going to zoom out a bit here.
DeCesare explained over the last 70 years or so, mountain goat populations in their native range have been declining, which includes goats in the Bitterroots.
Austin Amestoy: And what are the reasons for that?
Ellis Juhlin: Well, he told me there’s several things contributing to those declines, he ran simulations of what we know about the number of goats harvested by hunters in the Bitterroots going back to the 1950s.
Nick DeCesare: It's safe to say that Bitterroot goats declined as a function of harvest in past decades. So I do think that’s part of the story there.
Austin Amestoy: So overharvest in the past was a problem, got it. But what are those other parts of the story?
Ellis Juhlin: Well, here’s something that complicates things. DeCesare told me mountain goats don’t reproduce until they’re 4 or 5 years old, and they only have one kid per year.
Nick DeCesare: They don't have twins or triplets like deer do, so their production of animals when they are reproducing is fairly slow, and then they also will have these pauses where they're not getting pregnant every year.
So factor in that, and the fact that male and female goats both have horns – so a portion of goats hunted are always going to be those breeding adult females – and you’ve got a big impact on the population. But DeCesare said there are other things that play a role too, like weather, predator populations, and what kind of food is available on the landscape for goats to eat.
Although the Bitterroot goat numbers have gone down, it’s not quite as simple as populations are in trouble across the board. Austin, you remember those introduced goats? They’re actually doing quite well!
Austin Amestoy: How could I forget the goats packed by horses. So what’s the difference with those populations?
Ellis Juhlin: It’s the same one DeCesare and other researchers across the state are asking, and they're doing that with:
Nick DeCesare: A mountain goat research project in Montana that is aimed at better understanding the differences between native populations and introduced populations, and then also trying to understand mountain goat habitat with a fine lens.
Ellis Juhlin: If they can better understand what sort of habitat conditions goats prefer and do best in, they can successfully translocate goats from places where they’re doing well, to places they’d like to bolster the population.
Austin Amestoy: Makes sense to me. Have they made any progress so far?
Ellis Juhlin: Well, they’re still in the early days, but DeCesare and a whole team of biologists have spent the last four years getting GPS collars on goats to be able to start collecting data.
But here’s where things get even more complicated. Think back to Logan Pass or anywhere you may have seen a mountain goat before.
Austin Amestoy: Hmm, okay … mountain top, craggy, cold, snowy, forbidding – maybe that's just me.
Ellis Juhlin: I think you're pretty spot on. Now imagine trying to get somewhere like that. And now imagine doing it at a time of year where it’s not too hot, because heat stresses goats out, so there’s probably going to be snow, and then picture trying to get your hands on a goat that weighs anywhere from 100 to 300 pounds. And did I mention they have an attitude problem?
Nick DeCesare: Mountain goats can be ornery, and they have a pretty sharp weapon mounted on top of their heads. One of our capture crew members got cut in the arm last year, and I got my pants torn by a horn.
Ellis Juhlin: Plus, you might have to use a helicopter.
Nick DeCesare: Our capture crew, one of the last places we flew, the weather looked good. We flew up into the goat country and instantly all the people in the helicopter hit their heads on the ceiling because it was rocking up and down in the winds.
Austin Amestoy: Wow, that sounds more like an extreme sport to me, Ellis. And you said they’ve spent four years putting out collars. How has it gone?
Ellis Juhlin: They’ve gotten 50 collars out on goats, but that’s been a hard-won number.
Nick DeCesare: We were hoping to catch 90 in the first year, and now we're at 50, and we're on in year four.
Austin Amestoy: For all the technological advancements we may have, biologists still have to reckon with Mother Nature, don't they?
Ellis Juhlin: They really do.
Now I’m going to bring in another biologist, Dan Walsh. He’s the unit leader for the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit that's part of the University of Montana and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Dan Walsh: This will be our first year actually doing mountain goats, and to be honest, I've avoided mountain goat work and focused on sheep because they are so difficult.
Ellis Juhlin: He says this work is as exciting as it is hard, because there’s just so much still to learn about goats.
Dan Walsh: You've got adverse weather, fog, all the things that make this super difficult. So, they are definitely the most understudied ungulate species in North America, for sure.
Ellis Juhlin: Walsh has done a lot of research on respiratory diseases that negatively impact bighorn sheep, and it’s recently been found that goats carry those same pathogens, so he’s interested in studying that component of things as well.
He and DeCesare are co-advising two graduate students who are going to use the data from those 50 collared goats to determine what goats are eating, and where and how that translates into places where they could translocate goats and boost their populations.
Austin Amestoy: Fascinating. So this summer will be their first time collecting that data?
Ellis Juhlin: That’s correct.
Austin Amestoy: Is there anything else they’re looking at?
Ellis Juhlin: Walsh has done a lot of research with bighorn sheep. It’s too much to get into here, and goats are the star of this show – or at least this episode. But essentially, bighorn sheep are experiencing widespread die-off events tied to respiratory diseases, like pneumonia. They break out in a herd, killing off as much as 90% of the sheep, and then make it harder for lambs to survive in years after a die-off.
And while genetically speaking, sheep and goats are quite different, he’s found that they can seemingly contract the same pathogens that cause respiratory diseases killing sheep.
Dan Walsh: Now, we don't understand directionality – so who's giving the pathogen to who, or if it's a big horn sheep to mountain goat transmission – but we know that the pathogens occur in both species. We also don't know the impact, really, on mountain goats. And once again, that just goes to our general lack of knowledge about what's going on.
Ellis Juhlin: So that’s another thing that may be part of what’s hurting mountain goat populations.
Austin Amestoy: Well Ellis, it is always so good to have the GOAT of environmental reporting on The Big Why. Thank you for sharing your reporting with us today.
Ellis Juhlin: When it comes to this show, you’re the GOAT.
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