Rocky Mountain Goats

Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are a North American species of hoofed ungulate. They live in rugged river canyons and high-elevation mountainous areas across much of western Canada and the western United States.

Overview of Mountain Goats in North America

Mountain goats are adapted to living in extreme environments with harsh winter environments and are known for their impressive climbing abilities. They are herbivorous and feed on a variety of plants, shrubs, and lichens. They also rely on access to natural mineral licks.

Mountain goats are principled characters in some traditional Indigenous stories and laws, where their traits may be referenced. Anyone interested in learning more should seek these understandings from Nations themselves as a means to better understand Indigenous perspectives on the animal and its role in the ecosystem and societies.

Natural History and Ecology of Mountain Goats

During most seasons, female mountain goats (nannies) can be found in nursery groups of 10-20 individuals. Mountain goat nursery groups can be found in high altitude alpine meadows and near rocky cliffs during the summer months. These groups, which can include several females and their offspring, are led by a dominant female known as the matriarch. The young offspring (kids and young-of-the-year) in these groups stay close to their respective nanny for protection and learn important survival skills from them. These herds have distinct social structures, and dominant females frequently use physical posturing and even physical conflict to protect access to preferred habitats from subdominant animals.

Billies, or male goats, have similar social class hierarchies to nannies but live a more solitary existence. Most of the year, billies prefer steeper terrain and different habitats than nannies and nursery groups, but bands of young billies can commonly be seen congregating near nanny groups at times throughout the year. During the mating season, or rut, mature billies seek out and mate with reproductive nannies, ensuring future generations of mountain goats. Mountain goats are polygynous, which means that dominant males frequently mate with multiple females during the rut.

Kids and juvenile mountain goats under the age of 2-3 years have a naturally high mortality rate, most commonly due to predation, severe weather, and accidental falls that result in injury or death. Mountain goats can live in the wild for 10 to 14 years.

More Information on Mountain Goat Sexing

Conservation and Management of Mountain Goat Populations

Mountain goat ecology is a complex and dynamic field of study, with numerous factors influencing these animals' distribution, abundance, and behavior. Mountain goat populations face a number of threats, including habitat loss and degradation, human encroachment and disturbance, female over-harvesting, and disease/parasite transmission risk from other wildlife as well as interactions with domestic animals (e.g., sheep and goats). Climate change also appears to be negatively impacting mountain goats and their habitats in a variety of and cumulative ways.

Overall, mountain goat populations can be slow to recover due to a combination of biological, ecological, and anthropogenic (human-caused) factors. Wildlife managers can use a variety of strategies to protect and manage mountain goat populations, such as habitat restoration and protection, population monitoring and management, reducing hunting allocations/quotas, recreation management, and disease control.

Current Scientific Principles Of Mountain Goat Ecology

Some Key Facets Of Mountain Goat Ecology

Habitat Quality:

Mountain goats require the interspersion of specific habitat attributes to provide the necessary life requisites for survival, making it difficult for them to colonize new areas or recover in areas where their population has previously declined. Mountain goats can be found at high elevations or in river canyons, but in both cases, they need precipitous, rocky terrain with a mix of open and forested areas for foraging and cover. The quality of habitat can have a significant impact on mountain goat populations, with healthier populations occurring in areas with higher forage availability and larger complexes of escape terrain (i.e., cliffs). Goats are both browsers (eat parts of trees and shrubs) and grazers (eat grasses and herbaceous plants, and lichens) depending on the time of the year, so they are typically found in areas with more diverse and abundant vegetation types.

Climate Change:

Climate change, which affects weather patterns, can have an impact on mountain goat populations by altering the availability of food, water, and shelter.

Warming temperatures, for example, can cause snow to melt earlier, reducing the amount of available water during the summer months and resulting in a lower availability of high-quality forage. Conversely, cold wet springs with rain-on-snow events can both increase icing events that lead to accidental death from slips and falls (especially for younger animals) and delay vegetation green-up in the spring when nannies have their kids and require access to fresh and highly nutritious forage, which supports better milk production and the growth of healthier kids.

Health:

Mountain goat fitness can be influenced by nutrition as well as seasonal weather patterns. They can also be vulnerable to a variety of diseases and parasites, including respiratory infections, that they can acquire from other wildlife and also from domestic animals. The severity of disease outbreaks can be affected by an individual's fitness, and this can have a significant impact on mountain goat populations, especially if the animals are already stressed due to other factors such as human disturbance, habitat loss, or over-harvest.

Wildlife managers and biologists understand that as climate change affects both parasite species and distributions (i.e., more southerly species and pathogens migrating northward), it is reasonable to expect mountain goats to face new health challenges in the future that were nonexistent in the past.

Predation:

Mountain goats are preyed upon by a variety of predators, including eagles, wolverines, coyotes, wolves, grizzly and black bears, lynx, and cougars. The impact of predation on mountain goat populations varies depending on the season, predator abundance and behavior, and the availability of alternative prey.

The severity of disease outbreaks can be affected by an individual's fitness, and this can have a significant impact on mountain goat populations, especially if the animals are already stressed due to other factors such as human disturbance, habitat loss, or over-harvest. Wildlife managers and biologists understand that as climate change affects both parasite species and distributions

(i.e., more southerly species and pathogens migrating northward), it is reasonable to expect mountain goats to face new health challenges in the future that were nonexistent in the past.

Natural disturbances:

Although landslides are typically rare, it appears that with changing frequency and severity of rainfall and storm events, they are becoming more common. Avalanches, on the other hand, have long been considered an annual natural hazard in mountainous regions, but both events can have direct and indirect impacts on mountain goat populations. Direct impacts occur when mountain goats are killed or injured when they are caught in an avalanche or landslide. Indirect impacts occur when these events disrupt the mountain goat's habitat, such as by altering the availability of food, water, and forest cover. Avalanches can also uproot and overturn trees, causing erosion that leads to more and larger landslides, further damaging mountain goat habitat and making it more difficult for them to move around and find critical resources of food and cover.

Anthropogenic impacts

Human-induced pressures can have complex and wide-ranging impacts on mountain goat population dynamics and long-term survival including:

Habitat destruction and fragmentation: Mountain goat habitat can be destroyed, fragmented, and destabilized by human activities such as mining, logging, road construction, and development, making it more difficult for goats to find food, water, and shelter. These developments are also known to increase predators' ability to gain access to what would typically be refugia areas.
Human encroachment: Human activities such as hiking, camping, helicopter/motorized, and recreational activities may displace or disturb mountain goats. Displacement can have both temporary and permanent consequences, including reduced fitness/health, increased stress and reduced reproduction, lower survival rates, and population decline or extirpation.
Hunting and poaching: Hunting has the potential to reduce population numbers while also disrupting social structures. Poaching, or illegal hunting, can amplify the effects of legal hunting. Although hunting is rarely the sole cause of significant population declines, it is one of the first things to be curtailed if wildlife managers are forced to act to conserve a population, which is why hunters play such an important role in mountain goat conservation.
Disease transmission: Human activities such as domestic livestock grazing, pack-animal trekking, or the introduction of invasive plant species via droppings and supplemental feed can all increase the risk of disease transmission to mountain goats, which inherently have limited immunity to novel domestic pathogens. Mountain goats die-off events have occurred as a result of acquiring domestic respiratory pathogens, and the effects of these infections can last for many years, if not decades.

Low Reproduction

Mountain goats have a low reproductive rate for several reasons:

Mountain goats reach sexual maturity at a relatively late age, with females not breeding until they are 2-3 years old, and males not breeding until they are 4-5 years old. This delay in reaching sexual maturity means that it takes longer for mountain goat populations to grow. Most mountain goat populations are adapted to living in harsh, less productive high-altitude environments. Nannies typically give birth to one kid per year. They have evolved to invest their limited energy resources in the survival of their young; they simply lack the fitness resources in many cases that would allow rapid population growth. This means that even minor population declines can take a long time to recover from.
Mountain goats have evolved to thrive in isolated and rugged mountainous environments. Because these topographic features are not well connected across large areas of the landscape, goats face difficulties finding suitable mates at times due to their limited range and generally small population sizes. During the rut, mature, dominant billies will range in search of reproductive nannies, but their range may be limited by the amount of land they can or must cover. In some cases, the effects of inbreeding have resulted in decreased genetic diversity and reproductive success, which can further slow population growth.
Harvesting female mountain goats can have long-term effects on population structure because it can disrupt social dynamics within groups and populations, which can have health and fitness implications, and it can lead to a decrease in reproductive capability at the herd and overall population levels.

The Role Of Hunters In Mountain Goat Conservation Efforts

Habitat quality: Mountain goats require the interspersion of specific habitat attributes to provide the necessary life requisites for survival, making it difficult for them to colonize new areas or recover in areas where their population has previously declined. Mountain goats can be found at high elevations or in river canyons, but in both cases, they need precipitous, rocky terrain with a mix of open and forested areas for foraging and cover. The quality of habitat can have a significant impact on mountain goat populations, with healthier populations occurring in areas with higher forage availability and larger complexes of escape terrain (i.e., cliffs). Goats are both browsers (eat parts of trees and shrubs) and grazers (eat grasses and herbaceous plants, and lichens) depending on the time of the year, so they are typically found in areas with more diverse and abundant vegetation types.
Climate change: Climate change, which affects weather patterns, can have an impact on mountain goat populations by altering the availability of food, water, and shelter. Warming temperatures, for example, can cause snow to melt earlier, reducing the amount of available water during the summer months and resulting in a lower availability of high-quality forage. Conversely, cold wet springs with rain-on-snow events can both increase icing events that lead to accidental death from slips and falls (especially for younger animals) and delay vegetation green-up in the spring when nannies have their kids and require access to fresh and highly nutritious forage, which supports better milk production and the growth of healthier kids.
Predation: Mountain goats are preyed upon by a variety of predators, including eagles, wolverines, coyotes, wolves, grizzly