Forum Index > Public Lands Stewardship > Mountain Goat Management Plan Olympic National PARK 07/24/17
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reststep
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PostMon Sep 25, 2017 7:34 pm 
Article in the Kitsap Sun by Seabury Blair about the goats. He mentions that someone saw a goat in the Olympic Mountains 20 years before they were introduced. Sounds like he is for option A

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PostMon Sep 25, 2017 7:42 pm 
^ Another crackpot making a desperate attempt to perpetuate the myth that mountain goats were in the Olympics before 1929. I would encourage anyone who has any doubts go get the papers and read them. Without exception, every anecdotal report of "goats" sighted on the Olympic Peninsula, from the Spanish explorers to the Wilkes expedition and clear up to the year they were introduced was debunked.

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MtnGoat
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PostMon Sep 25, 2017 8:17 pm 
Ski wrote:
Humans put them there in 1929 expressly for the purpose of being able to shoot them. Shooting them achieves that original objective. There is nothing "subjective" about whether or not mountain goats are native to the Olympic Peninsula. Exhaustive studies have been done that conclusively prove they are not, and never were, native to the Olympic Peninsula. Those papers are available from Olympic National Park.
I don't recall ever having run across the idea that slaughtering every single living goat in the Olympics was the reason for putting them there, so I'm dubious on the idea that an genocidal Olympic goat shoot achieves the original directive. I didn't argue that it was subjective that they were in the O's or not prior to introduction, clearly either they were or were not. Probably not is my take. But that position wasn't my point anyway, it was of course the purely subjective value judgement of deciding that non-native should mean a death sentence for all the goats. All because one's value system yields a subjective determination that human agency in the form of putting them there, lends them some lesser value than the wonderfully native West Slope Rainwort or whatever.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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MtnGoat
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PostMon Sep 25, 2017 8:22 pm 
Ski wrote:
^ Another crackpot making a desperate attempt to perpetuate the myth that mountain goats were in the Olympics before 1929.
Aside from the wonderful decorum being demonstrated, given that crackpot is one of your lesser insults compared to what I've run across prior, who was the first one making an attempt to perpetuate this myth? So far as I can tell, that poster is the first one. Who did I miss? I do love seeing a fellow poster labeled a crackpot merely for posting a link to a source you disagree with. That's gold right there.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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PostMon Sep 25, 2017 8:39 pm 
Sorry... should have clarified that for you: "crackpot" refers to the author of the article cited, not the nwhikers member who posted the link. You can believe whatever you like, MtnGoat - doesn't make one little bit of difference to me.

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PostTue Sep 26, 2017 9:12 pm 
Tuesday September 26, 2017 14:50 PDT Public Comment Period for Draft Olympic National Park Mountain Goat Management Plan Extended to Oct 10, 2017 The public comment period was originally scheduled to end on September 26th and will now end at midnight MOUNTAIN TIME on Tuesday, October 10th. A series of public meetings have already been held and to date there have been a little over 600 pieces of correspondence received. The National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife received a request for an extension to the comment period from state elected officials. The National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife invite the public to review and provide input about proposed alternatives for managing non-native mountain goats in the Olympic Mountains. The draft alternatives are described and analyzed in the Draft Mountain Goat Management Plan Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which was released in late July and can be reviewed at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/OLYMgoat. The plan’s purpose is to allow Olympic National Park to reduce or eliminate environmental impacts from non-native mountain goats, and reduce potential public safety issues associated with the goats’ presence in the park. The plan alternatives include actions proposed to occur within Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest, and associated actions proposed by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife to translocate mountain goats to the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan Wenatchee National Forests in the Cascades. The National Park Service announced its plan to develop a Mountain Goat Management Plan/EIS in July 2014. Public scoping workshops were held in August 2014 and public comments were invited. Approximately 100 pieces of correspondence were received and used in developing the Draft Mountain Goat Management Plan EIS. This comment period also serves as the final designated comment period to provide specific written comments to be eligible to object to the U.S. Forest Service decisions on this project. The opportunity to comment ends 60 days following the date of the publication of the EPA Notice Of Availability in the Federal Register. The draft EIS is available for review and comment at: http://parkplanning.nps.gov/olymgoat. Copies of the draft EIS are also available at public libraries in Darrington, Enumclaw, Granite Falls, North Bend, Sedro-Woolley, Skykomish, Sultan, Aberdeen, Amanda Park, Hoquiam, Hoodsport, Forks, Port Angeles and Port Townsend. Copies of the draft EIS are also available at WDFW regional offices in Montesano and Mill Creek, as well as headquarters office in Olympia. Comments can be mailed or hand-delivered to: Superintendent, Olympic National Park, 600 East Park Avenue, Port Angeles, WA 98362. To ensure your comments are included in this process, they must be entered into the above referenced website or postmarked by October 10th. Comments will not be accepted by fax, email, or in any manner other than those listed above. Bulk comments in hard copy or electronic formats submitted on behalf of others will not be accepted. Before including your address, phone number, email address, or other personal identifying information in your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment—including your personal identifying information—may be made publicly available at any time. While you can ask us in your comment to withhold your personal identifying information from public review, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. www.nps.gov (* emphasis added *)

"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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MtnGoat
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PostWed Sep 27, 2017 9:35 am 
Ski wrote:
Sorry... should have clarified that for you: "crackpot" refers to the author of the article cited, not the nwhikers member who posted the link. You can believe whatever you like, MtnGoat - doesn't make one little bit of difference to me.
Thank you for the clarification. As for the latter, that is abundantly obvious..and it seems to extend to arguments I make which are true... but you won't allow that to make a difference.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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RodF
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PostWed Sep 27, 2017 10:20 am 
MtnGoat wrote:
But that position wasn't my point anyway, it was of course the purely subjective value judgement of deciding that non-native should mean a death sentence for all the goats
The NPS Science Board Advisory Committee also questions NPS policy guidance on the priority and extent of actions, up to and including eradication, in cases where evidence that an exotic is having significant adverse impact is inconclusive or lacking. It writes:
Quote:
It is notable that one plan, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for mountain goat management in Olympic National Park (NPS 1995b), was never completed due to public controversy. An interesting aspect of this effort is that the park was challenged about whether or not mountain goats were (a) non-native and (b) having negative effects on park lands. A review by non-NPS scientists (Noss et al. 2000) concluded: 'Available evidence suggests the mountain goat has never been native to the Olympic Peninsula… On the other hand, available data are insufficient to establish that mountain goats are causing significant damage to vegetation, harming rare plant populations, or are otherwise having deleterious impacts on the natural system (p. iv).' Our review considered these aspects because NPS policy identifies the conditions that must be fulfilled to remove non-native species—up to and including eradication: control must be prudent and feasible; and the non-native species must interfere with, disrupt, or damage park resources, or significantly hamper their management, and/or pose a public health or safety hazard (NPS 2006a, section 4.4.2). However, the same section of the NPS Management Policies document also seems to suggest that non-native species don’t necessarily need to cause damage in order to merit actions for removing them: 'Lower priority will be given to exotic species that have almost no impact on park resources or that probably cannot be successfully controlled.' There is need for clarification on this point.
("A Comprehensive Review of National Park Service Ungulate Management: Second Century Challenges, Opportunities, and Coherence", Natural Resource Report NPS/NRSS/BRMD/NRR—2014/898, page 23). In an excellent article in Seattle Times also notes this:
Quote:
The debate boiled over, and the Department of the Interior hired an independent panel of scientists to sort out facts. “It was very contentious,” said Reed Noss, a conservation biologist who led the panel. “Our report pleased absolutely no one.” In a 2000 report, Noss’ team affirmed the park’s narrative: The goats were almost assuredly descendants of those transported in the 1920s. But the claims of harm to vegetation were backed by sloppy science, Noss said. Physical impacts like rain, snow and ice are more likely culprits in damage to rare native plants, he said.
Although I agree with the Park that the evidence is sufficient to justify eradication of mountain goats in Olympic, this is, as you say, subjective. Evidence to support the necessity of translocating ~350 goats to N. Cascades is also lacking in the draft EIS. Proposing an extensive helicopter campaign in 4 Wilderness areas requires a finding of necessity, not merely of desirablity or preference.

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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PostThu Sep 28, 2017 2:16 pm 
Does anybody think there could be support for legislation to allow the NPS to have a public hunting season for goats on the OP? It makes sense to me but what do the rest of you think?

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RodF
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PostFri Sep 29, 2017 9:54 am 
Humptulips wrote:
Does anybody think there could be support for legislation to allow the NPS to have a public hunting season for goats on the OP?
I'm sure there would be support for it. WDFW currently receives 16,000 applications for only about a dozen once-in-a-lifetime mountain goat hunting permits it issues each year. It runs a lottery with a 1 in a 1000 chance of winning. Mountain goat tickets are sold in a raffle which produces over $42,000/year in application fees. The chance of getting Congress to override NPS and change Federal law is ~nil. A cynic might observe that NPS prefers (Alt. D) to spend $1+ million for an extensive wilderness helicopter campaign to translocate mountain goats to where it's legal to hunt them, rather than to permit hunting where NPS wants neither goats nor hunting!

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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PostFri Sep 29, 2017 12:53 pm 
RodF wrote:
The chance of getting Congress to override NPS and change Federal law is ~nil. A cynic might observe that NPS prefers (Alt. D) to spend $1+ million for an extensive wilderness helicopter campaign to translocate mountain goats to where it's legal to hunt them, rather than to permit hunting where NPS wants neither goats nor hunting! <!-- function quoteSelected() { insertText('
RodF wrote:
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I kind of suspected this but I was wondering how other people might feel. So am I correct in reading your post that you think the NPS would be the biggest opponent? I was actually thinking any proposed legislation could be written pretty narrowly. I know there are some NP administered lands that allow hunting.

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RodF
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PostFri Sep 29, 2017 6:28 pm 
Now the following may sound esoteric, but if you'll bear with me and it's relevance will become clear.
Humptulips wrote:
So am I correct in reading your post that you think the NPS would be the biggest opponent?
NPS has never said it would oppose or even lobby against any law Congress may pass. They can't do (or even say) that (it's illegal). However, NPS' INaction speaks louder than words. In 1976, US Congress amended the General Authorities Act, ordering:
Congress, in Public Law 94-459 and 54 USC 100754(c) wrote:
The Secretary [of Interior] shall diligently pursue the consummation of arrangements with each State, Conmonwealth, territory, or possession within which a unit of the National Park System is located to the end that insofar as practicable the United States shall exercise concurrent legislative jurisdiction within units of the National Park System.
and granting the Secretary authority to finalize such agreements without any further act of Congress. For decades, NPS diligently and I repeat diligently did nothing to obey this law. GAO even issued a report, reporting NPS' diligent inaction. Finally, in 2014, NPS finally did retrocede exclusive jurisdiction over 5 NPS sites in South Carolina to the state, its first and so far only action to obey that law. Why is this relevant? NPS claims, in their FAQ on the mountain goat plan, that Congress would have to amend the law to allow hunting in Olympic NP. Well, this simply isn't true. If NPS obeyed the law above, retroceded exclusive Federal jurisdiction over Olympic National Park to the state of Washington, it would become an area of concurrent state-Federal jurisdiction. It would repeal the entirety of 16 USC 256, which accepts exclusive Federal jurisdiction over Olympic National Park, including 16 USC 256(b) which prohibits hunting and authorizes NPS to regulate fishing within the Park. Washington state hunting and fishing laws would then apply in the Park, just as they do in the surrounding Olympic National Forest, which is an area of concurrent jurisdiction. NPS simply doesn't want to do that. INaction speaks louder than words.

"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir "the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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PostFri Sep 29, 2017 8:58 pm 
Thank you, that was enlightening. I would imagine any attempt to open the ONP to hunting across the board would meet a quick end. Short of retroceding exclusive jurisdiction to the State I would think they could be allowed to use public hunting in a very narrow capacity to remedy their problems with Mountain Goats and even forced to consider its use by Congressional action. I don't imagine that will happen but I still would be interested in hearing what others would think about that prospect.

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moonspots
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PostSat Sep 30, 2017 6:25 am 
Ski wrote:
Public Comment Period for Draft Olympic National Park Mountain Goat Management Plan Extended to Oct 10, 2017
Thanks, Ski. Comments made.

"Out, OUT you demons of Stupidity"! - St Dogbert, patron Saint of Technology
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PostSat Sep 30, 2017 6:34 am 
Humptulips wrote:
I would imagine any attempt to open the ONP to hunting across the board would meet a quick end.
I can't imagine (legitimately) why. This was successfully done in the Roosevelt National Park (SW North Dakota) some years ago to control the elk population. The process worked quite well.

"Out, OUT you demons of Stupidity"! - St Dogbert, patron Saint of Technology
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