Goat Counts in Okanagan, BC (Completed)

We are working with the BC Ministry Region 8 Wildlife Biologist team in collecting adult and kid mountain goat counts. The data collected will be used to help identify herd size and risk of disease such as Mycoplasma Ovipneumoniae within the herd.

There will be a series of counts being completed between July 20th and August 17th. Counts will be conducted on Wednesdays with the ministry team and ideally a volunteer based count each weekend (depending on volunteer turnout).

Each count will consist of 3 groups of 3 people. Volunteers must be physically prepared to hike steep terrain and cover up to 20kms in summer temperatures. Due to the high temperatures, we will be departing for these counts via boat in the early morning approx between 4-5am.

We are also looking for volunteers that have boats that would be willing to help ferry people into the Okanagan Mountain Park.

If you are interested in participating in these counts, please email our Regional Representative Danny Coyne at danny@goatalliance.org .

Background: 

The Bighorn sheep herd on the East side of the Okanagan valley have been badly affected by MoVi over the past 5 years. These sheep herds share winter range and do overlap spontaneously with the Mountain Goats in the area. The ministry biologists along with the Okanagan Nation Alliance are in the process of establishing a management plan to address the affected sheep herds. Before this is done, they need to find out if the Mountain Goats have also been affected by this disease. Very little is known about the impact of MoVi and Mountains Goats. The counts will help determine the health of the goat herds. This can be done in a few ways such as:

- Identifying symptoms of MoVi (coughing, snotty nose, sick looking animals).

- MoVi impacts lambs the most once they are weaned from their mothers. When they are nursing they receive antibodies from the ewes. Once they are weaned, they lose these antibodies and the lambs succumb to the disease. Within a few weeks of the lambs being weaned the herd experiences a high mortality rate, this usually happens mid August. This goat count we will be focusing on nannies and kids. We will count these groups while the kids are nursing from the nanny and then again after the kids are weaned. Our observations will determine if the kids experience the same mortality as the lambs. If these counts identify that we are losing kids, then further investigation into MoVi within the goat herd will be occur. This could include goat scat collection or trapping goats for MoVi testing.