Somewhere in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 14 Colorado expatriates are dining beneath the nation’s most heralded presidents.
Granted the grub consists of scrub grass and flowers, but the 14 mountain goats – shipped from Leadville to western South Dakota public land near Mount Rushmore – don’t mind.
“They’re doing very well,” said Chris Hull, a spokesman for the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department.
The recently exported Colorado goats are an important component of South Dakota’s plan to revive its struggling goat herd, which has dropped from a high of 400 in the 1940s to about 100 today.
“They’ve always been very visible. Tourists really enjoy seeing them in the Black Hills,” Hull said.
Biologists say they don’t know why the herd is dwindling but suspect that mountain lions may be killing off more than their fair share. Genetics also may play a factor.
Hull said South Dakota’s herd was established in the 1920s, when six goats were shipped to the state from Alberta, Canada.
Today’s goats are direct descendants of the initial herd and might benefit from diversifying the gene pool.
“They’re not dying off; the nannies are still having kids, but sometimes it’s not as frequent as we might like,” Hull said.
Colorado’s mountain-goat herd, however, is thriving, with about 2,000 goats chiefly roaming near the Collegiate Peaks, part of the Sawatch Mountain Range in central Colorado.
Michael Seraphin, a Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman, said there’s always been much debate as to whether the goats are natives.
Early European settlers describe seeing animals that resembled mountain goats, but they might actually have been female bighorn sheep. Their horns are similar.
“That’s led to some confusion from these historical accounts,” Seraphin said. “Bighorn sheep may be mountain goats or vice versa.”
Mountain goats tend to edge out bighorn sheep as they compete for crucial winter range, so Colorado wildlife managers were happy to oblige South Dakota’s request.
The goats were captured in early November near Mount Massive and Mount Elbert near Leadville and eventually trucked to the Black Hills.
The goats were released on about 50,000 acres near Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is home to cliffs, rock faces and ledges – prime mountain-goat habitat.
Hull said department officials hope to return to Colorado next year for more goats.
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-954-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
