Blindfolded mountain goats flown in slings across US national park back to natural habitat

Blindfolded mountain goats are being flown across a US national park in slings dangling from helicopters in a bid to return them to their natural habitat.

Officials began rounding up the non-native mammals from remote parts of Olympic National Park in Washington state.

Humans introduced the goats to the area in the 1920s and now animal capture specialists have been called in to relocate them to their natural habitat in the Cascade Mountains.

The experts sedate the animals with darts or capture them in nets, blindfold them, pad their horns and fly them to a staging area.

For the second straight summer, mountain goats are flying in Olympic National Park.
AP

They are then looked over by veterinarians and outfitted with tracking collars before being trucked to the Cascades.

From here they are once again flown by helicopter, this time into their new alpine habitats.

A pair of mountain goats being flown to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park, near Port Angel.
AP

The relocations began last year, following a years-long stretch of planning and public comment, with 115 of the roughly 725 mountain goats in the Olympics being moved to the Cascades.

Officials captured 17 goats on Monday and Tuesday at the start of a two-week goat relocation period, including a 6-week-old kid, which got a ride on a mugger's lap inside the helicopter instead of hanging beneath it.

Olympic National Park Wildlife Branch Chief Patti Happe reaches toward a pair of mountain goats.
AP

The Olympics have few natural salt licks. That makes it more likely goats there will be attracted to the sweat, urine and food of hikers, potentially endangering the hikers.

One goat fatally gored a hiker in 2010.

A wildlife capture specialist known as a "mugger," carries a kid mountain goat from a helicopter on Tuesday.
AP

A coalition of state and federal agencies and American Indian tribes is behind the effort, which involves closing parts of the park, including the Seven Lakes Basin and Klahhane Ridge.

A second two-week closure period is planned for August.

Derrick Halsey, a wildlife capture specialist known as a "mugger," hands off a kid mountain goat to Olympic National Park Wildlife Branch Chief Patti Happe.
AP

"Mountain goat relocation will allow these animals to reoccupy historical range areas in the Cascades," Jesse Plumage, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist.

The capture of the goats was contracted out to Leading Edge Aviation, a company that specializes in animal capture and relocation.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to release the goats at six sites in the Cascades.

They include the Chikamin area in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Preacher Mountain in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Hardscrabble Ridge and mountain peaks south of Darrington.

Rich Harris, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist leading the agency's work to move the goats, told The Seattle Times this month that of those relocated last year, about 65 to 70 survived the winter.

Half of the 10 relocated kids survived, he said.

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