The wee problem that attracts big, aggressive goats to Washington's Olympic Park
‘While the train is in the station, please refrain from urination’ school-boys chanted to the tune of Dvorák’s Humoresque, writes .
There is no such appeal to rail passengers nowadays but visitors to Olympic National Park, in Washington State, are asked not to pee near trails. Smells from hikers’ urine, sweaty clothes and backpacks attract aggressive goats. The animals were introduced to the park a century ago, but the place lacks natural salt deposits.
All animals need salt. We may be ‘the salt of the Earth’ but our bodies don’t manufacture the stuff; we get it from our food and lose it when sweating. People take salt tablets to avoid fainting in the extreme heat of the tropics. Places with names ending in ‘wich’, such as Norwich, were sources of the mineral. Ghandi trekked 390km to the coast of Gujarat ‘to make salt’. Supplies were transported to Rome along the Via Salaria, now a state highway. Some historians, however, reject the familiar claim that the term ‘salary’ originally referred to the salt allowance paid to Roman soldiers.
Unlike us, sea-dwelling creatures have no problem getting salt; it’s all around them. Carnivores get theirs from the bodies of victims. Herbivores, such as deer and goats, however, may experience shortages.
The Rocky Mountain goat is a magnificent beast, with black eyes, hoofs and horns standing out against gleaming white fur. It’s usually very difficult to approach but there is little problem doing so in Olympic Park; the goats there have grown accustomed to people, with disastrous results
In October 2010, a man was fatally injured. According to The Seattle Times, 63-year-old Robert Boardman was hiking with his wife and a friend, when an aggressive goat approached them. Boardman faced down the animal, trying to shoo it away while his companions retreated; nobody saw the actual attack. Standing over its victim, the goat wouldn’t let anyone approach. Pelted with stones, it finally backed off. The rangers shot it.
A survey in 2016 suggested that there were around 625 goats in Olympic Park, their numbers growing by 8% annually. Over-grazing is damaging the ecosystem. During the 1980s, a proposal to shoot some of them failed when animal-rights supporters objected. There is no option now but to reduce the goat population.
Some areas are to be closed to hikers for health and safety reasons. Seriously offending animals will be shot, their carcasses left lying around, ‘pour encourager les autres’. Tranquillised goats are to be transported, slung beneath helicopters, to locations where there are few people. Hundreds of goats were removed in this way during the 1980s.
It seems odd that salt deficiency is such a serious issue in a park. Would placing ‘licks’ at strategic locations not solve the problem? Farmers use them to keep livestock healthy. I have seen licks put out for deer in Ireland. The really intractable problem is, surely, the goat population explosion; action must be taken to reduce their numbers.
Animal lovers object to culling but, sometimes, we must ‘be cruel to be kind’. Sensitive habitats have to be protected from large herbivores in the absence of natural predators. Otherwise, animals become their own worst enemies and it all ends in tears. We have striking examples of this closer to home. Red deer in parts of Scotland are eating themselves out of house and home. There were up to 1,300 fallow deer in the Phoenix Park in the past. Culling reduced it to 40 during the ‘Emergency’ but numbers increased again. The herd is now kept to around 450.
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