Mountain Goats Worrisome in Bighorn Sheep Territory
February 20, 2012, JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - Non-native mountain goats have gained a foothold in parts of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and could threaten native bighorn sheep, including the Teton Range bighorn sheep herd, biologists say.
Researchers from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have joined forces to study the hardy, aggressive invaders, which have likely begun breeding in the Teton Range.
"They don't get much attention," said Bob Garrott, director of Montana State University's Fish and Wildlife Ecology and Management Program, and leader of the research effort.
"Learning more about their population ecology and spacial ecology can help inform management and conservation."
Garrott and his colleagues are capturing mountain goats and outfitting them with two different collars. One collar contains a Global Positioning System device that records the goat's position every six hours for two years.
When that falls off, another activates to give wildlife research less
specific data for the next four years.
Researchers will gather data from 12 collared goats captured in the Palisades Range along the Wyoming-Idaho border southwest of Jackson Hole. They will be looking for the types of habitat goats use, whether they have offspring and how long they survive. That data will then be compared to bighorn sheep research.
"The study areas that we have are the Palisades, where we have goats and no sheep, and the Gros Ventre ... where we have sheep but no goats," Garrott tells the Jackson Hole News & Guide.
Researchers also plan to capture both goats and sheep in the Cody area, where the two species occupy the same mountain ranges. In Montana, researchers will study both goats and sheep around Gardiner.
Mountain goats were introduced into mountain ranges in the region, including the Palisades Range, by wildlife managers in Idaho and Montana a few decades ago, "and they're doing quite well and expanding their range," Garrott said. Read more....
|
  |
Wild Horse Island Bighorn Transplant off to Slow Start
Watch Video
February 2, 2012, BIG ARM - More than one theory emerged Thursday morning as what has become an annual transplant of bighorn sheep off of Flathead Lake's Wild Horse Island got off to a molasses-slow start.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Bruce Sterling wondered out loud if the sheep were getting wise.
This is, after all, the third consecutive year the animals' bucolic existence on the island, 99 percent of which is a primitive state park the sheep share with 150 or so mule deer and seven wild horses, has been suddenly interrupted by a helicopter chasing them.
Maybe the shock-and-awe of the experience has turned into more of an "oh-no-not-this-again, time-to-hide-in-the-trees" affair.
Rick Swisher, the pilot of the Hughes 500D helicopter, had his own idea.
"They don't want to leave," he radioed his field truck driver, John Zaczkowski of St. Cloud, Minn., back on the mainland. "They love it out here - there aren't any mountain lions to get them."
That lack of a predator is one reason bighorn sheep are removed from Wild Horse on a now-yearly basis. The population - counted at 230 last week - is double what FWP feels is ideal for the 2,164-acre island.
"The habitat is extremely high quality," Sterling said. "Their reproductive rate is good, and their survival rate is really good because they have no predators on the island. Read more....
Past News
|
