Spearditch Canyon goats pit locals against SDGFP

Speaking of killing unwanted mountain goats: Spearditch Canyon in the Black Hills has become home to a herd of inbreds. 

In 2013, 75 percent of Badlands National Park's bighorn sheep died in a pneumonia outbreak tied to contact with a domestic herd. But as South Dakota's wildlife management bureaupublicans release bighorn sheep onto federal lands, ostensibly to knock down a cheatgrass infestation created by the failure of Black Hills forest policy, the GOP-owned Game, Fish and Plunder wants to kill more mountain goats.

Spearditch photographer, Les Heiserman has been capturing images of a male and a harem born in the canyon after unions with the goat's mother and his siblings since 2016.

According to the “South Dakota Mountain Goat Management Plan, 2018-2027,” Custer State Park officials obtained six mountain goats from Alberta, Canada in 1924, and placed them in a zoo at the park. The first night in the zoo, two goats escaped. By 1929, the rest of the goats had escaped. This was the beginning of goats in the Hills. [Residents concerned about Spearfish mountain goats]

In 2010, the Odd Goddess of Basin and an interested party hiked over breathtaking Siyeh Pass in Glacier National Park where we nearly walked right up to a fearless flock of mountain goats lounging on a rock bench.

They go from “passive to aggressive really fast,” said Joel Berger, the Barbara Cox Anthony University Chair of Wildlife Conservation at Colorado State University. One of Berger’s recent studies found that in high alpine environments in the Rocky Mountains where mountain goats and bighorn sheep compete for resources, goats displace sheep — as much as 95% of the time when salt licks were the issue. And, while sample sizes differed across ecosystems, Berger said the results were largely consistent: “The patterns of goat domination, in all cases, whether introduced or exotic, were the same. Goats win.” [In the Rockies, goats beat bighorn sheep]

The outcry at Heiserman's Faceberg page is deafening.