Tweeters:

I was surprised about the incident because I had thought the removal program had
taken all the animals. I do recall that Klahane Ridge in the old days was especially
reliable for them. I hiked a good stretch of rocky talus habitat this last Sept and saw
no animals.

As Mark notes the goats pose a problem to the alpine ecosystem there, thinking
of rare vascular flora like Piper's Bluebell (Campanula piperi) and Neowebster's
Groundsel (Senecio neowebsteri) and several other endemic taxa found in the high
Olympics and nowhere else in the world. I feel like the Olympic Marmot, formerly
just treated as a subspecific endemic but now considered a full species, also
found only in the high Olympics, is less common up in subalpine areas than
formerly, wonder about the goats.

Scott Atkinson
Lake Stevens
mail to: scottratkinson at hotmail.com