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    Life on the Rocks: A Portrait of the American Mountain Goat
    Life on the Rocks: A Portrait of the American Mountain Goat
    Life on the Rocks: A Portrait of the American Mountain Goat
    Ebook208 pages2 hours

    Life on the Rocks: A Portrait of the American Mountain Goat

    By Bruce L. Smith

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    About this ebook

    National Outdoor Book Award Winner: A photo-filled study of the elegant, elusive American mountain goat in its rugged natural habitat.
     
    Confined to the remote, rugged mountains of the western United States and Canada, the American mountain goat is one of the least familiar species of hoofed mammals in North America. These extraordinary mountaineers are seldom seen, and their lives and fortunes may be the least understood among the continent’s large mammals. Life on the Rocks offers an intimate portrayal of this remarkable animal through the lens of field biologist and photographer Bruce Smith.
     
    Color photographs and accounts of Smith’s personal experiences living in Montana’s Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area accompany descriptions of the American mountain goat’s natural history. Smith explores their treacherous habitat, which spans the perilous cliffs and crags of the Rocky, Cascade, and Coast mountain ranges. The physical and behavioral adaptations of these alpine athletes enable them to survive a host of dangers, including six-month-long winters, scarce food sources, thunderous avalanches, social strife, and predators like wolves, bears, lions, wolverines, and eagles. Smith also details the challenges these animals face as their territory is threatened by expanding motorized access, industrial activities, and a warming climate.
     
    “The noble mountain goat is exquisitely adapted to place. As this fine book makes clear, though, people are changing those places, and fast. Here's one more face of creation asking implicitly that we back off some.” ―Bill McKibben, environmentalist and New York Times–bestselling author of Falter
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 25, 2019
    ISBN9781607322924
    Life on the Rocks: A Portrait of the American Mountain Goat

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      Book preview

      Life on the Rocks - Bruce L. Smith

      Life on the Rocks

      Life on the Rocks

      A Portrait of the American Mountain Goat

      Bruce L. Smith

      University Press of Colorado
      Boulder

      © 2014 by Bruce L. Smith

      Published by University Press of Colorado

      5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C

      Boulder, Colorado 80303

      All rights reserved

      Printed in Korea

      figure-c001.f001 The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses.

      The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Utah State University, and Western State Colorado University.

      ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Smith, Bruce L., 1948–

      Life on the rocks : a portrait of the American mountain goat / by Bruce L. Smith, Ph.D.

      pages cm

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 978-1-60732-291-7 (cloth) — ISBN 978-1-60732-292-4 (ebook)

      1. Mountain goat. I. Title.

      QL737.U53S63 2014

      599.64'75—dc23

      2013036242

      Design by Daniel Pratt

      23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Cover photographs by Bruce L. Smith

      Contents

      Preface

      Part I

      Chapter 1. Beginnings

      Chapter 2. How to Build a Goat

      Chapter 3. Behaving Appropriately

      Chapter 4. Rewards and Risks

      Chapter 5. Among the Goats

      Part II

      Chapter 6. Across the Continent

      Chapter 7. Conservation: Local Challenges

      Chapter 8. The Global Challenge

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgments

      Suggested Reading

      figure-c000.f001

      It’s a long way down. (Photo by author)

      Preface

      Far above where most humans venture, where the upthrust peaks embrace the heavens, a gentleman dressed in a shaggy white cloak roams the heights. Trimmed in beard, baggy pants, black nose, and stiletto horns, he rambles the ridgetops amid blinding snow and biting wind, where winter reigns half of the year. Perhaps the most extraordinary mountaineer to ever live, this Old Man of the Mountains is America’s mountain goat.

      I became interested in mountain goats as a student studying wildlife biology at the University of Montana. That state’s mule deer, elk, pronghorn, moose, and bighorn sheep were a beguiling assemblage of ungulates (hoofed animals) to this Michigan transplant. In 1971, during a Thanksgiving weekend visit to the home of my college roommate’s parents in Great Falls, I first made acquaintance with the mountain goat. Beholding an unblinking head that austerely poked from the wall, I thought this was the most elegant beast that I had ever seen.

      Twenty miles south of Missoula, Montana, and beyond sprawled the nearest population’s retreat where I spent future weekends searching for the real thing. My fascination grew with each sighting of these wind-racked apparitions, clinging to the ragged edge of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area—at that time, the largest designated wilderness in the lower forty-eight states. Following a senior thesis of finding and counting them in winter, I fashioned a research proposal for a graduate degree program. From 1973 to 1975, I tromped the glacially carved canyons that spilled eastward from the crests of the Bitterroot Mountains to the river below. Focused on the environmental bottleneck that most tests the goats, I spent three winters and springs studying and marveling at their adaptations and behaviors so suited to life among the peaks. Throughout a conservation career in which large mammals dominated my field studies, again and again I returned to goat ranges in the United States and Canada to witness their high wire acts.

      Wildlife photography, much like scientific research, is often a solitary pursuit. Stalking the animals with enough sensitivity to not alarm them—or, better yet, positioning oneself so the animals find the viewfinder on their own—takes the kind of patience that only the mountain goat may truly own. Capturing their images should not be rushed, in part because gravity happens quickly. One fall that broke a bone and another swift trip I took down a slope in an avalanche were reminders of the perils that the goats face daily.

      Most of the photographs I’ve chosen for this book are from those frigid months when goats confront nature’s rigors with tenacity and grace. Gripping the grim limits of possibility, this is among the continent’s most remarkable of inhabitants—a testament to nature’s abhorrence of a biotic vacuum. Yet, despite the apparent security of its wilderness realm, America’s mountain goat faces mounting challenges in a changing world. For no species lives far or deep or lofty enough to escape the pervasive reach of humankind—not the polar bear, the whale, or the eagle, not even the mountain goat.

      By sharing these images, words, and my affection for the animal, my hope is to bring greater appreciation and attention to the conservation needs of this American athlete of the alpine.

      figure-c000.f002

      Intense light, snow, and gravity—extreme elements of the mountain goat’s lofty domain—make the bearded beast a challenging subject to photograph. (Photo by author)

      Life on the Rocks

      Part I

      Like a ghost that drifts among clouds and cliffs, in defiance of gravity itself, abides this improbable beast of the peaks. From the loftiest vantage of any large mammal on the continent, it has watched the comings and goings of others over untold generations. This time-tested perspective accords the Old Man of the Mountains some authority on success and failure and what conditions render each. We may do well to take heed.

      Chapter One

      Beginnings

      From American Indians, the Corps of Discovery first heard about a white beast that dwelt among the peaks. They marveled at the shaggy hide purchased from Chinookan Indians along the Columbia River. In 1805 Captain William Clark even glimpsed a live one, albeit at a great distance, near what now is the Idaho-Montana border.

      figure-c001.f001

      Just as fascinating and incomparable as the mountain goat are the topography and geology of the realm the animal inhabits. (Photo by author)

      In 1778 Captain James Cook recorded the earliest hint of the creature’s existence. During stops at British Columbia and Alaskan villages on his around-the-world voyage, he was struck by the spun wool garments worn by the natives. When the Indians pointed out white animals perched high on the rocks as the source of the garments’ wool, Cook called them polar bears.

      Others have confused the animal with mountain sheep, which also occupy the continent’s western mountains. Indeed the English translation of the mountain goat’s taxonomic genus, Oreamnos, suggests as much—lamb of the mountains.

      Still others reckoned the beast bearing a shoulder hump and simple black horns as a new variety of a familiar species. In 1798, Alexander McKenzie described the animal he spotted in the mountains near the McKenzie River as a white buffalo. Although albino bison do exist, McKenzie’s arctic animal was likely the mountain goat.

      figure-c001.f002

      Curious yet cautious, a goat peers over a lichen-encrusted rock. (Photo by author)

      It’s not hard to imagine how the early explorers, trappers, and fortune-seekers might find the notion of a white buffalo roaming the mountaintops as much reality as phantom or fable. Some 25–50 million bison once roamed the continent and were well known to most who ventured west. Even in fiction, the taxonomy of this stout-shouldered creature was enigmatic. A passage from The Big Sky, Pulitzer prize-winning author A. B. Guthrie’s yarn about the mountain men of Montana, describes the mountain goat this way:

      It ain’t a buffler proper, nor a white antelope, neither, though you hear the name put to it and a

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